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CNN SATURDAY MORNING NEWS
Snow Removal, Cleanup Becomes Major Headache for Northeast
Aired March 1, 2003 - 09:51 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Some parts of the Northeast have seen record snowfalls this year, and the cleanup has been a major headache. Some of the cleanup has not been environmentally friendly, apparently.
CNN's Kathleen Koch has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Philadelphia dumps it into the Delaware River, Boston's Coast Guard into Boston Harbor. But the once-pristine snow is a nasty mix of road salt, sands, oils, chemicals, even copper and cyanide.
Several recently snow-pummeled states, including Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland, prohibit the practice because it could harm the environment.
BILL STREET, CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION: It bypasses any type of filtering that you might get on the land and just sort of accelerates that runoff going through the rivers. And what that polluted runoff then does is, fuels algae that can kill underwater grasses, can block sunlight, and create very sort of dead zones of low oxygen, where crabs and fish can't survive.
KOCH: Still, some cities insist in severe snowfalls they have no choice. Buffalo has gotten permission over the last year to dump snow in Lake Erie.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'd prefer not to do that, but in this situation, it's an emergency situation, we have very few options.
KOCH: Jersey City is one of four New Jersey cities that got waivers to dump snow into nearby rivers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the rivers, I don't think, is a big problem in an emergency. I think in an emergency, it's an OK thing.
KOCH: For now, though, Jersey City is piling the snow next to its reservoir. But even that, says the man orchestrating Washington, D.C.'s snow removal, can cause problems.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of this stuff contains material that's going to go down to the river eventually. So there will be an impact on the environment.
KOCH: But the impact varies, says the Environmental Protection Agency.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It depends, on a site-by-site basis, what the ecosystem is, what the volume of snow being dumped is, and what the concentration of the parameters in that particular load of snow is. So there's no generalization possible.
KOCH: Most at risk? Contained bodies of water, like lakes, where pollutants can build up. Environmentalists encourage cities to use snow-melting equipment to dispose of unwanted drifts, and to opt for sand and other chemical cousins to salt that are less polluting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They cost a little bit more, but they work better, so the departments don't have to apply as much. And they don't contain some of the impurities that road salt contains.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KOCH: Washington, D.C., which has gotten an incredible 40-plus inches of snow so far this winter, does not dump its snow into the local rivers, specifically the Potomac River behind me here. But, you know, that decision, what to do with the snow, is made not by the EPA but by local and state governments.
So you can bet that in severe winters like this one, lakes, streams, and rivers will continue to be handy snow-dumping sites, Anderson.
COOPER: All right, Kathleen Koch, thanks very much, appreciate it.
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