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Health & Fitness

Salt Pollution in Tolland

Our most valuable resource in Tolland, WATER is being polluted from the over-the-top application of SALT on our streets.

This past winter the Town of Tolland used ($218,096) 2,879 tons of salt on our streets. This amounts to approximately 25 tons per mile. Yes, the figures are correct and the Town of Tolland has been doing this since 2008. Beginning in 2008 before the use of all this salt, I appeared before the Town Council numerous times with facts and information about salt pollution. One fact about salt: There are only three places that salt when applied on our streets will go. It will go into our water, into our soil or into our neighbors’ water down stream. 

In my opinion the excessive “salt” application (25 to 29 tons per mile) has polluted wells on and around Robbie Road. If one well in this area is polluted, there could be more. As of the October 11, 2011 Town Council meeting, one well at 58 Robbie Road has been identified as having exceeded the “EPA Secondary Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for Chloride levels. To further the cloud the issue of high level salt use as the reason for well pollution, the EHHD (Eastern Highland Health District) has recommended that further testing throughout the Town of Tolland be discontinued. This was done with the knowledge that in each of the three years of testing, the Sodium levels and the Chloride levels have increase in each of the testing sights year after year. Testing one well on Robbie Road will be continued. There does not appear to be any urgency on the part of the Town of Tolland or the EHHD to find the cause of salt polluting the well. 

I have recommended to the sitting Town Council that all the wells in and about Robbie Road, Stevens Road, Curtis Drive, Lorraine Drive and Oakwood Lane be tested. I don’t profess to be and expert on the subject, but using common sense and a little research on salt, this seems to be a no brainer. If anyone in Tolland wants more information, you can Google Wisconsin storm water pollution, New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, Road Salt Polluting Wisconsin Waterways, Minneapolis-ST. Paul. Minnesota the trouble with Road Salt, or look up Woodstock, Ct., Bennett Farm: (it took almost 8 years for the State of CT to correct the problem of cows dying, from what? ---SALT!). 

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Is there a problem in Tolland, CT?  The answer is YES!  As an individual I believe in “Straight Honest Questions—Straight Honest Answers.” As I have said many times before to the sitting Town Council over the last four years, “IT’S TIME TO PUT TOLLAND CITIZENS FIRST.”

I have attended almost every Town Council meeting for the last four years and I am a Republican candidate for Town Council in November.

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Sam Belsito

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