Salt used for deicing the streets near Rochester, New York, has increased the chloride concentration in Irondequoit Bay at least fivefold during the past two decades. During the winter of 1969-70 the quantity and salinity of the dense runoff that accumulated on the bottom of the bay was sufficient to prevent complete vertical mixing of the bay during the spring. Comparison with 1939 conditions indicates that the period of summer stratification has been prolonged a month by the density gradient imposed by the salt runoff.
Extensive use of road-deicing salts in the drainage basin of Irondequoit Bay on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, changed the bay's chemical and thermal stratification and mixing patterns. The bay's 438-square-kilometer drainage basin contains urban, suburban, and rural land and is intersected by highways and roads that were heavily treated with deicing salts in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Irondequoit Creek, the major stream in the bay's drainage basin, receives most of the runoff containing these salts and discharges directly to the bay.
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