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If you happen to reside in a area the place snow and ice are widespread in winter, you most likely already know you shouldn’t scatter rock salt to make sidewalks and backyard paths protected for pedestrians. Positive, salt (aka sodium chloride) is reasonable and melts the ice, however it could actually wreak havoc on vegetation—to not point out your poor canine’s ft and your personal footwear. It additionally erodes concrete and corrodes steel gates, fences, and your automobile. What’s worse, salt in runoff harms aquatic life in our streams, rivers, and lakes, and does additional harm after it contaminates the earth’s groundwater provide.
For recommendation on environmentally pleasant methods to clear ice and snow, we talked to Andi Pettis, director of horticulture on the Excessive Line, the beloved New York Metropolis park that opened in 2009 atop an deserted elevated railway and which stretches for nearly a mile and a half on the west aspect of Manhattan.
Keep away from Compaction
How do park staffers take away ice and snow from the Excessive Line’s paths? In response to Pettis, they do it the old school approach. The first step: Whereas snow is falling, they shut off the park to maintain individuals from strolling on the paths and compacting the snow.
“The climate on the Excessive Line is at all times extra intense than at floor stage,” says Pettis. “The park is actually a bridge thirty ft within the air, so it freezes each from above and under. And the wind off the Hudson averages twenty miles per hour sooner than at floor stage.” That implies that snowfall freezes shortly on the paths (product of pre-cast concrete pavers), particularly if it will get compacted, and takes a very long time to soften.
Excessive Line caretakers are particularly delicate to problems with water air pollution. “The grading is engineered in order that precipitation runs straight into the planting beds,” says Pettis. “However any overflow drains into town sewage system, and the much less salt we put into that the higher.”
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