Concerns about unknowns and environmental impact prompt county to halt use of soy brine
By Kellen Olshefski
Editor
After discussion and review throughout this fall, the Walworth County Board of Supervisors voted Nov. 12 in favor of rescinding a resolution that accepted a donation from the Kikkoman Corporation earlier this fall.
The resolution was approved by the Board in September and accepted a donation of an 11,000-gallon storage tank for the purpose of storing waste salt brine to be used on county roads as a deicing and pre-wetting agent in the winter months.
Walworth County Director of Central Services Kevin Brunner said during the Oct. 20 Public Works Committee meeting Kikkoman – being a Green Tier company – had read about other Wisconsin counties using cheese brine as a deicing agent on its roads. Brunner said Kikkoman then approached the Wisconsin DNR about the possibility of using its waste brine for the same purpose.
After discussion and a pilot study by the DNR, Kikkoman was awarded a five-year permit, or exemption, allowing them to provide the brine to communities for use on roads.
Brunner said Oct. 20 the DNR permitted the use of the product on roadways and brought the idea to the county. Additionally, he said he felt the brine had use as a potential pre-wetting agent on salt – which he said studies have shown pre-wetting agents reduce the amount of chlorides by 30 percent – and additionally as an effective deicer on certain areas, hills, ramps and bridges that are more susceptible to ice build-up.
During the public comment period of the Nov. 12 County Board meeting, Ted Peters, director of the Geneva Lake Environmental Agency, said the phosphorus in the brine is a major concern for area lakes, a “worst enemy” of the lake business, as he put it.
“We just hate to see it around. It does nasty things to our lakes, our streams, and the spreading of this on the roads without understanding where it goes or what happens to it, is a very serious concern to me,” he said.
Peters also noted high levels of nitrogen and CODs and BODs, which indicate large amount of organics that use up oxygen in the decomposition or assimilation process, often times stripping oxygen from the water and making it uninhabitable for aquatic organisms.
Peters clarified he has no “beef” with Kikkoman and the agency has supported the business in its push for Green Tier certification, though he feels there’s just too many unknowns with using the product on county roads.
Supervisor David Weber said later in the meeting, if the DNR has approved it, he wondered if there was a way the County could use the product in a kind of guarded method, using it exclusively on broader areas, away from the watersheds of Lake Como and Delavan Lake as examples.
Either way, Weber said he felt the Board didn’t have enough information to say yes or no at this point, noting the impact of crystal salt on waterways has been a question for years and yet the County still needs to provide safe passage for the populous with ice and snow on the roads.
“Now, we have another alternative and we aren’t accepting that,” he said, suggesting a trial use to determine how much of a critical impact it has.
“To just shut it down doesn’t seem like it’s a fair assessment of what sort of resource it could be for the populous.”
Walworth County Engineer Joe Kroll said from a Public Works perspective, it would be difficult to use the brine in one place, and another product in other areas.
Additionally, trying to measure the impact he said would probably use more resources than it’s worth.
“In talking with public works, Kevin, we’re not really advocating for it either way,” Kroll said. “We don’t want to make more of an issue out of it than it could possibly become.”
County Administrator David Bretl said he agreed with Kroll and noted public works’ study would likely be whether or not it worked as an effective deicer and the product’s impact would be out of the county’s wheelhouse.
“We would definitely be beyond our expertise in saying after three years of application here’s what these levels are before and after in a controlled kind of study,” he said.
Supervisor Paul Yvarra said it’s hard to support a proposal when the unknowns outnumber the knowns.
“All the discussion always goes around that we really don’t know what we’re doing or what are the effects of this,” he said. “So, I can’t see supporting anything. it doesn’t seem like we are moving forward because we might be bringing in more problems than we have now.”
Bretl explained to the Board that the product is a waste product that would be tanked to the county yard, but as it’s not salty enough it would freeze and the county would have to add salt to it.
“So, essentially what you’re getting is some brackish brine that you have to add salt to,” he said. “Salt is cheap and water is cheap, frankly, so we still have the labor of putting salt in the brine.”
Bretl said he would defend county staff in the sense that they don’t do chemical analysis and don’t have a lab and that the recommendation to accept the donation was based solely on a report from the DNR, “who does have chemists and went through a process.”
“There clearly is phosphorus in it, there’s phosphorus in a lot of other things that discharge into water, but that doesn’t necessarily make the right thing to do.”
Bretl noted the DNR had been invited to speak further on the topic, but was unable to make it and hadn’t provided much additional information aside from its original report.
Supervisors Rick Stacey, Tim Brellenthin, Yvarra, Charlene Staples, Dan Kilkenny and County Board Chairwoman Nancy Russell all voted in favor of rescinding the resolution accepting the donation. Supervisors Joseph Schaefer, Kathy Ingersoll, Weber, Richard Brandl and Kenneth Monroe voted no.
