With an early, snowy start to winter this year, it’s time we update you on our progress developing the Salt Management Strategy (SaMS) for Northern Virginia. At the end of July 2018 when we sent our last newsletter ( click here to read it), we were working on finalizing our workgroup membership and planning the first workgroup meetings. Since then we have met with all 6 workgroups, beginning the process of developing the recommendations that will make up the SaMS.

Workgroup meetings were very productive and had great participation. Each meeting concluded with the scope of the workgroup clarified, ideas about the recommendations they will propose, and volunteers for homework to begin preparing the workgroup’s preliminary recommendations. For a composite summary of workgroup meeting highlights, click here. Otherwise, you can find the past schedule for all six workgroups and links to their detailed meeting summaries below:

 

With recommendations covering education and outreach, monitoring and research, and best practices to reduce the over application of salts (including tracking/reporting), there’s a lot to cover in the next year of development. However, with an active stakeholder body full of experience and insight and the great start in the first round of workgroup meetings, we’re excited for the months to come. Starting in January and ending in April we’ll have our next round of workgroup meetings, followed by our third Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) meeting in the spring (view the full timeline here, schedule of next workgroup meetings below). The third SAC meeting will include presentations on the proposed recommendations of the various workgroups, allowing the stakeholder body as a whole to discuss the developing recommendations. So with lots to come over the next few months, stay tuned for more updates on the development of the SaMS!

Meeting Announcements for the Second Round of Workgroup Meetings:

The Water Quality Monitoring & Research Workgroup is developing an inventory of existing water quality monitoring work related to ions throughout the Northern Virginia region. If you know of any non-governmental organizations doing monitoring work in the region, please share the survey link below with them:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/IonMonitoring

As mentioned last time around, the SAC could still benefit from more property/building managers and winter service providers being involved. So if you know of any interested managers or service providers, we’d love to include them in the discussion!

You can submit comments, questions, and contacts to Dave Evans at David.Evans@DEQ.Virginia.gov.

As concerned citizens, we hope that you will continue the conversation with your family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Better public awareness of the benefits and impacts of winter salt use will only improve the success of the SaMS. For more information, check out our “ Report on the Impacts of Salts on the Environment, Infrastructure, and Property , ” our SaMS Project webpage , and also the materials from all of our meetings at our meeting materials page.