In the days leading up to Winter Storm Fern dumping a foot of snow on Licking County, the Granville Township road crew was excitedly preparing to use its new high-tech, ice-fighting weapon.
It’s brine-mixing equipment that precisely mixes road salt and clean water to a salinity of 23.3%. And a smiling Granville Township Roads Superintendent Travis Binckley will tell you in a geeked-out, road-salt-scientist tone that a consistent 23.3% is the bomb.
“That is the magic number,” he said. “It works down to minus 6 degrees.”
Salt alone won’t make a dent in ice at that temperature.
And why does all of that matter? Because it’s far more efficient than salt alone, and it will reduce the total amount of salt required during winter snow events, said Binckley, who applied for and won a $75,000 H2Ohio Rivers Chlorine Reduction Grant to help pay for the de-icer mixing equipment. The deadline for applications for the next round of grants is Feb. 6.
The new equipment also allows the township to move away from using brine pulled from conventional oil and gas wells, which it had used in the past. That brine used by many local governments can contain volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene. And it also can include radioactive material, says the Buckeye Environmental Network, which is lobbying the Ohio Legislature to approve House Bill 439 to ban spreading such brine on roadways to melt ice and control dust.
Growing concerns about contaminants
An Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) study in 2017 said that the levels of radium-226 and radium-228 in wellfield brine it tested were above state limits for discharge into the environment and “human consumption is highly discouraged.”
Chronic exposure to high levels of radium, like that found in wellfield brine, can “result in an increased incidence of bone, liver or breast cancer,” according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. As radium decays, it creates radon, a colorless, odorless gas that is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the country. Licking County is considered “ground zero” for radon in the United States, according to a 2025 investigation from The Columbus Dispatch.
But state law doesn’t require local governments to test brine so that they know exactly what they are spreading on streets and roads. It requires only that they report how much they use and file reports with the state.
State highway officials stopped the practice of spreading brine after the ODNR study, said Anton Krieger of the Buckeye Environmental Network, who specializes in issues related to oil and gas waste.
“The Ohio Turnpike Commission and the Ohio Department of Transportation stopped using it because we’re getting complaints that it’s toxic,” he said. “The problem is that ODOT doesn’t manage all roads.”
He said the practice of road spreading brine from oil and gas wells dates back to at least 1985 when it became legal in Ohio.
Krieger noted that state law, Section 1509.226 of the Ohio Revised Code, allows for spreading brine from conventional wells. Those wells are a few thousand feet deep at most, “not the big fracking operations,” Krieger said. “They’re not allowed to use waste from deep, horizontal wells” being drilled in the Utica shale layer 5,000 or more feet below the surface, Krieger said.
More than 100,000 conventional wells have been drilled in eastern Ohio since the late 1800s, according to ODNR. Because wellfield brine is considered waste material that well owners must dispose of, some offer it free to municipalities, counties and townships willing to take it for use on the roads.
Ohio communities collectively have spread tens of thousands of barrels of brine on roadways in the past four decades, according to Krieger, who has obtained thousands of records from the ODNR Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management. That agency collects the “Surface Application Annual Report” forms that local governments are required to submit to track when, where and how much wellfield brine they spread on roads.
Heath: ‘Grand champions’ of brine use
Among those using wellfield brine on streets and roadways in Licking County, the City of Heath uses the most, according Krieger, who compiled and analyzed ODNR records.
“The State of Ohio makes you (municipalities and townships) track it, so you can look at each city’s spreading history,” Krieger said. “Heath has a 40-year history of being the highest spreader in Ohio. They are the grand champions.”
Heath owns four wells in Madison Township, just east of the city, according to a searchable map maintained by the ODNR Division of Oil & Gas.
Heath Mayor Mark Johns, whose signature appears on many of those ODNR Surface Application Annual Reports, said that the city does not pull brine from wells that are still producing oil or gas, although the state’s searchable map lists the status of all four of the city’s wells as “producing.”
“There is no harvesting of oil or natural gas from the wells from which we get brine water for our streets,” Johns told The Reporting Project. “We have wells from which we pump water independent of any oil.”
He said ODNR Division of Oil & Gas officials told him that the brine Heath uses is considered “formation brine,” and that even though Johns said it is not a byproduct of oil or gas production, ODNR says that “formation brine water usage also is reported to that division of ODNR.”
Johns said the city recently tested the brine it spreads on residential streets and Rt. 79, according to state records, and he said test results showed a low level of radon in the brine – much lower than the upper limit allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency in drinking water.
He said that the city tested for radon-222 because it is the decay product of radium-226, but it didn’t test for radium. And he did not know if the test considered volatile organic compounds.
“I want us to take this information and let’s see if we need to further look at it,” Johns said. “This is a work in progress for us. We don’t think we have a problem, but we’re looking into it. If there were issues with what we are applying that somehow are sideways with requirements from the EPA, we will certainly take that into consideration. It doesn’t appear that we are, but we’re continuing to look at this.”
Krieger said there’s a “cognitive dissonance” in a state where one agency, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, says using brine to treat roads is an unhealthy practice and a state law says it’s legal to spread on the roads.
“I find it fascinating that this is the one waste stream we have allowed, and it’s radioactive and so common,” Krieger said.
“The legal limit for distribution of radioactive material is 60 picocuries per liter,” he said. “Over that, and you can’t distribute it in the environment. If you do, it will accumulate in the environment and in our drinking water, and it will take a toll on public health.
“These radioactive isotopes mimic calcium in the body,” he said. “They will rot your bones from the inside out, not to mention the potential for birth defects.”
Moving away from wellfield brine
Free is tempting, Binckley said about the brine offered by well owners, but the environmental concerns and the inconsistency in salinity – which reduces its effectiveness and therefore requires more road salt – prompted him to apply for a state grant to cover most of the cost of the new brine-mixing equipment.
The equipment from Varitech Industries cost $86,000, and the grant covered $75,000. Binckley said the township will make up the difference in a matter of months because the township won’t need to buy as much salt – currently 500 tons a year at a cost of about $40,000 annually.
The “Brine Boss Automated Salt Brine Production System” can mix 2,500 gallons an hour, which Granville Township can store in a large tank at the township garage until needed. It’s then pumped into tanks on township trucks.
Currently, the township sprays its brine onto salt as it is being applied to 38 miles of roadways during bad weather. The wet salt sticks to the road surface, Binckley said, rather than bouncing off into a ditch as some dry salt will do. And the brine on the salt immediately begins to melt ice.
Some trucks without dump beds for salt will be outfitted with only tanks for de-icer, further reducing the need for road salt.
“It’s just water and salt,” Binckley said. “We’re eliminating all the radium and all of the other chemicals.”
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.