For over 15 years, volunteer citizen scientists have monitored water quality in Stoney Creek, in Burnaby, British Columbia. Using conductivity measurements, we have located point-source contamination from a road salt storage area on the Simon Fraser University campus. To find out if the road salt was harming the salmon in our creek, we conducted an in-stream bio-assay. We put fertilized Chum salmon eggs in a tributary that is contaminated with road salt and also in a clean tributary. In the winter, when salt is being spread, the contamination comes in pulses. Some pulses last only 3 hours, so standard methods of determining toxicity do not apply. In the summer, the ground water entering the creek remains contaminated.
Results/Conclusions
The bio-assay showed that, in both the contaminated tributary and in the clean tributary, the eggs survived equally well as do hatchery raised eggs. But after hatching, the alevins in the contaminated tributary had more than twice the mortalities and deformities as do those in the clean tributary. As a result of our work, the university moved their road salt from the open shed to a closed winter facility and improved their winter road maintenance practices. My poster raises policy implications for managing road salt in all northern jurisdictions.