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Summary De-icing agents containing chloride ions used for winter road maintenance have the potential to negatively impact groundwater resources for drinking water supplies. A novel methodology using commonly-available geospatial data (land use, well head protection areas) and public accessible data (salt application rates, hydrometric data) to identify salt vulnerable areas (SVAs) for groundwater wells is developed to prioritize implementation of better management practices for road salt applications. The approach uses simple mass‐balance terms to collect chloride input from 3 pathways: surface runoff, shallow interflow and baseflow. A risk score is calculated, which depends on the land use within the respective municipal supply well protection area. Therefore, it is plausible to avoid costly and extensive numerical modeling (which also would bear many assumptions, simplifications and uncertainties). The method is applied to perform a vulnerability assessment on twenty municipal water supply wells in the Grand River watershed, Ontario, Canada. The calculated steady-state groundwater recharge chloride concentration for the supply wells is strongly correlated to the measured transient groundwater chloride concentrations in the case study evaluation, with an R 2 = 0.84. The new method provides a simple, robust, and practical method for municipalities to assess the long-term risk of chloride contamination of municipal supply wells due to road salt application.

De-icing agents such as road salts while used for winter road maintenance can cause negative effects on urban stream water quality and drinking water supplies. A new methodology using readily available spatial data to identify Salt Vulnerable Areas (SVAs) for urban streams is used to prioritize implementation of best management practices. The methodology calculates the probable chloride concentration statistics at specified points in the urban stream network and compares the results with known aquatic species exposure tolerance limits to characterize the vulnerability scores. The approach prioritizes implementation of best management practices to areas identified as vulnerable to road salt. The vulnerability assessment is performed on seven sites in four watersheds in the Greater Toronto Area and validated using the Hanlon Creek watershed in Guelph. The mean annual in-stream chloride concentration equation uses readily available spatial data – with province-wide coverage – that can be easily used in any urban watershed.