Snow Dumping on Marsh?

Question

In Madison, Wisconsin, due to the record amount of snow this year, the normal practice for storing excess snow failed, and a large amount of garbage-laden snow was dumped onto a marsh near Lake Mendota. There are two sides to this issue.

1. Dumping garbage-laden snow, lead-laden snow onto a marsh near a lake will cause toxic pollution to enter our water table, and possibly poison us. The snow should not have been dumped there.

2. With little warning, and not enough money, the marsh was the best place to dump the snow. To leave the snow in the streets would let it drain directly into the lake, while the marsh will serve to help purify the snow before it reaches the lake.

What is your take on this? Is it better to allow some snow to overflow storage and contaminate a marsh, or should some other solution, any other solution, been found?

Answer 1

I'd be particularly worried about the amphibians that use the marsh. Amphibians are particularly sensitive to pollution as they absorb toxins easily through their skins. Dumping snow laden with petrochemicals from roads into the marsh will cause damage. The lake might very well be cleaner but only because all the toxins have been left behind in the marsh.

Answer 2

If you had a better and workable solution you should have brought it to the powers that be before and not after the fact when the real / imagined damage has already been done.

I am sure if it was a workable and not a more expensive or less efficient plan that it would have been considered.

Answer 3

Is Madison such a filthy place that there is garbage and lead lying around in the streets?  How could moving it make things worse for you?

Other than that, snow is just frozen rain water.  It would end up in the swamp eventually anyway.