Hilary Dugan

So here in the Midwest, we're, you know, putting millions of tons of road salt into the environment every winter.

We're now talking 70-plus years of road salt use.

And what we've seen in the lakes is...

The salinity kind of steadily increasing year after year as more and more salt is put down.

Like, think about humans.

If you drink or eat too much salt, like, you're not going to necessarily die, but like...

You're not going to feel good.

And it might be affecting other parts of your health.

I don't know what she's talking about.

I could foresee in my lifetime certainly a winter when Mendota doesn't freeze.

Black ice is really strong and it's what freezes in the lake water itself.

So it's what's freezing downward.

White ice is what's forming when you freeze snow or slush.

And that white ice has a lot more air in it, just weaker in general.

So the festival on the ice was canceled and it was sort of moved to the shore, which is really unfortunate.

It was still fun.

You know, we still had a lot of the same things, but, you know, it takes away the spirit of what this festival is about.

We'll just have these really cold polar vortex events followed by heat waves.

And so winter is no longer this duration of cold weather.

It kind of bounces around all over the place.