ALBANY — Anyone who doubts that time is our most valuable resource probably hasn’t witnessed the final days of New York’s legislative session.
The long-awaited passage of the state budget last week unleashed a mad scramble for state senators and assembly members to try to hurl the bills — which were all but stalled as negotiations between the legislature and governor stretched 57 days days beyond the budget’s April 1 due date — they’re championing across the finish line before the final gavel.
That is officially scheduled to end late Thursday, though it may be extended a day by leadership. In that time, hundreds of bills — ranging from plastic packaging to an AI data center moratorium to a congressional redistricting amendment — will receive serious consideration for floor votes.
One of those is the Road Salt Right to Know Act, which would require the state Department of Transportation to create a publicly-accessible website that is updated on a monthly basis throughout the winter showing how much salt has been applied on state roadways.
The bill requires that data be route-specific, which advocates say is crucial to understanding how much variance there is to salt application. Some gnarly stretches of road will inherently require more salt treatment to maintain a consistent level of safety.
The bill does not impose any restrictions on how much salt can be put down. While oversalting is a longstanding problem, especially in the Adirondacks, and one that environmental groups like the Adirondack Council are fighting to reduce, they say this bill is a “critical” first step toward any enforceable and effective salt limits for the state.
“It makes it difficult without a central system to analyze use or assess efficiency or identify environmental risks,” Adirondack Council communications director John Sheehan said. “The whole point of doing the road salt studies to begin with was to try to find a way to keep roads safe while also protecting water quality and preventing a public health problem.”
Sheehan said the DOT’s salt application metrics are hard to come by. While the DOT reports statewide lane mile salt application averages each year, those lack the specificity for scientists to determine where too much salt is being applied.
The Lake George Association — a scientific and environmental conservation advocacy organization dedicated to preserving Lake George’s water quality — has repeatedly made Freedom of Information Law requests for more data, but said those were inconsistent and difficult to interpret.
The Adirondack Council has made similar requests, and Sheehan said the data provided more concerns than answers. He said the DOT’s report indicating a statewide reduction in the lane-mile salt application for 2024-25 seemed odd, given that it was a harsher winter season than the last few, and would have warranted more treatment, even if rate reductions had been implemented.
“We were getting a report that road salt was likely to have gone down when it seemed pretty clear it went up,” he said. “That conflicting information made it pretty plain to us that we needed to have a better tracking system, and we seem to have good support for that in both houses.”
While limited and informal, Sheehan added that the Adirondack Council had a patchwork of reports from local managers and private contractors from that winter. For the most part, these were people who had already taken the initiative on road salt reduction practices, such as using brine instead of rock salt and better calibrated equipment. While their application rates were down — a success story — their overall salt use was often equivalent to earlier seasons because it had to be done more frequently.
“The most important thing, as far as we’re concerned, is having an accurate picture of what’s actually going on to the ground and getting into the water,” Sheehan said. “The only way we can do that is to start with a tracking system that essentially informs the public of every place salt is being used, and how much. That’s step one to getting an accurate picture of everything that’s being released into the environment.”
A DOT spokesperson said the department has no comment on pending legislation, but pointed to a number of road salt reduction efforts undertaken since 2018, starting with pilot programs in the Adirondacks that were implemented statewide last year. These include:
— The use of brine for pre-storm anti-icing.
— The use of a plow truck with an innovative plow (2-stage plow or live-edge (segmented) plow) to mechanically remove as much snow and ice from the pavement as possible.
— The use of treated salt, which is more effective at colder temperatures.
— The use of GPS (automatic vehicle locating equipment) that can track salt application rates.
— Closely monitoring salt use during events and performing post-storm evaluations to review application rates and the performance of those rates.
— Leveraging other maintenance program areas (drainage, pavement, environmental) to see how they can be used to facilitate snow and ice operations and subsequently reduce the dependence on road salt.
The spokesperson added that the DOT frequently engages with municipalities on best practices and sharing new research and information from the field.
A WORK IN PROGRESS
The Road Salt Right to Know Act replaced an earlier bill this legislative session from state Assembly Transportation Committee Chair Bill Magnarelli, D-Syracuse, which sought to implement a uniform limit of 300 pounds of salt application per lane mile per treatment.
While road salt reduction advocates said the intention was good, it faced widespread opposition as being too much of a one-size-fits-all approach while potentially discouraging further progress in areas where salt application is already below that threshold, but still might be too high for that specific area.
That 300-pound bill never made it out of committee in the Assembly. But seeing the initiative to find a solution, the Adirondack Council began working with Magnarelli and state Senate Environmental Conservation Committee Chair Pete Harckham, D-South Salem.
It’s a problem the two lawmakers are well aware of. Harckham was the keynote speaker at the Lake George Association’s 2025 Adirondack Champlain Regional Salt Summit. Magnarelli told the Enterprise last July that while oversalting awareness may have originated in the Adirondacks, it’s now a statewide issue that, among other things, is threatening New York City’s reservoirs, which provide drinking water to about 8 million people.
Magnarelli said then that it’s something the DOT is concerned about and working to address. He just disagreed with the 2024-25 salt reduction legislation — which failed to come up for an Assembly vote — that called for a road salt reduction council and advisory committee, saying those would be time consuming and ineffective, but would look to other solutions this session, starting with the 300-pound cap, and then the Right to Know bill.
Identical versions of the bill were introduced by Magnarelli on April 24 and Harckham on April 28. The state Senate passed it on Monday in a 44-16 floor vote. North Country senators Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, and Mark Walczyk, R-Sackets Harbor, both voted “no.” Senator Erik Bottcher, D-Manhattan, who grew up in Wilmington, was one of the bill’s five co-sponsors, and voted “yes.”
Sheehan said the senate’s recent action was good momentum, but with the Assembly traditionally being the log jammer of the two houses, he said getting it across the finish line will be tough, but remained hopeful.
“The Assembly is always such a hard nut to crack at the end of the legislative session because there’s so much that has to happen through that house at the very end, and there’s often an attempt to drag out the debates on controversial subjects and press into the time that is left for getting done what people wanted to finish before the session ends,” he said. “But we have support among leadership on this. They seem motivated to get it done and we think that’s a very good sign.”
DETAILS
The Road Salt Right to Know Act is officially labeled S10094 in the Senate and A11105 in the Assembly.
The bill would require the DOT to calibrate its snow plows and winter surface treating equipment and standardize their salt and other treatment materials measurements. For each route, the following metrics would be recorded: total trip miles, total spread miles, work order number identifier and route identification number.
The bill would require the time, location, application rate, number of lane miles spread and various environmental conditions at the time of the spread to all be recorded.
It also would establish a voluntary municipal winter maintenance data partnership program allowing local authorities to participate in the data system.
In addition to public reporting, the bill would require the DOT and state Department of Environmental Conservation to analyze the data system and identify areas of high application and reduction strategies to employ in said areas. The DOT would also have to submit an annual road salt report to the governor and state legislature. The bill would give the DOT a two-year implementation window.
“That’s a pretty generous timeline,” Sheehan said. “Given the technology and the talent available to them at the moment, they could probably do it tomorrow. But we didn’t want to force them into a position where they’ve got to comply with a mandate overnight that they didn’t know they had.”
The bill’s full text is available at tinyurl.com/mr3yzkhh.
If the Assembly fails to vote on the bill before the adjournment, Sheehan said they’ll hit the ground running next January.
“If we can’t get it finished by Friday — and this has been a tough session to get much of anything done — this becomes ‘priority one’ for us in the next go-around,” he said. “But we would much rather see something happen while we’ve got their attention, and we’re going to press to make that happen between now and Friday.”