Marissa Arora Baugh, stormwater superintendent for the City of South Burlington, told the Senate committee that the city has tracked salt application and invested in equipment and training to reduce chloride loading to local brooks.

South Burlington staff said four local streams — Potash Brook, Bartlett Brook, Centennial Brook and Anglesview Brook — are chloride‑impaired and that Potash Brook regular monitoring shows specific conductivity levels well above thresholds associated with harm to aquatic life.

“We were aware that chloride impairment was going to be a problem ... and we’ve been continuously monitoring since then,” Marissa Arora Baugh said, describing stream conductivity data that the city collects to track salt impacts.

The city’s approach includes pre‑wetting salt, a low municipal application target (described to the committee as a goal of about 50 pounds per lane mile), routine calibration of spreaders, mechanical plow blades that limit abrasion, truck telemetry to monitor rates by vehicle, and staff training done in‑house.

“We have tracking software ... and we post it on a bulletin board downstairs where the crew can see it,” Arora Baugh said, adding that the public‑works office uses the visibility to encourage driver buy‑in and lower application rates. The city reported a declining trend in pounds per lane‑mile over roughly a decade.

South Burlington is planning a software upgrade with geofencing and remote rate setting so the deputy director of operations can automatically trigger lower application rates when trucks enter chloride‑impaired watersheds.

But Arora Baugh and committee members said private commercial properties and homeowners remain a major source of salt entering municipal watersheds. The city has run outreach campaigns and coordinated with other local MS4 permit holders to promote “salt smarter” messaging, but officials said uptake is mixed.

“We do feel that it is very difficult for us to meet any sort of requirement ... without the participation of the private landowners,” Arora Baugh said, noting that private parking lots and dumped snow piles commonly concentrate salt near stormwater flows.

Arora Baugh also highlighted capital constraints: the city has invested roughly $63,000 to date on equipment upgrades and expects to spend about $28,000 to upgrade the tracking software plus $4,000 per year in subscription fees for the new platform.

The presentation offered an example of how a municipal combination of data, equipment and training can reduce municipal salt use while the larger statewide chloride picture will depend on uptake by private property owners and grant funding for structural fixes such as covered salt sheds.