It doesn’t just disappear," said Joe Grande, the water-quality manager in Madison, Wis. • Road salt is polluting our water: Here’s what we can do to fix it Madison is one of the more notable cases of drinking water contamination by sodium chloride.
Most people start tasting salt in water once it reaches concentrations of 250 milligrams per liter.
Even before that point, though, water can start to taste off.
The water, Fitzpatrick said, "does taste a little saltier, but it’s not like you would drink it and say, ‘Oh my gosh that’s super salty.’"
• ‘Dead fish or dead people?’
The challenges of curbing road salt use Madison has tried alternative deicers like cheese brine and beet juice, Grande said, but the level of organic compounds in those solutions create such an oxygen demand when they run off into lakes that they risk killing fish.
And there’s no way to clean up salt-contaminated water, aside from reverse osmosis.
In Minnesota, we’re safe from drinking salty water for the near future.
However, Brooke Asleson, water pollution prevention coordinator for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, said they’re deep enough that the chloride contamination already found in some of the state’s surface water hasn’t reached them yet.
While there is an increasing trend in chloride levels in these aquifers, they’re not close to affecting how the water tastes, Asleson said.