Desalinating irrigation water contaminated by road salt run-off in Calgary.

In spring 2025, Ionic Solutions will commence a pilot project with a private golf course in Calgary to remove road salt run-off from the club’s irrigation water. 

Every winter, more than 5 million tonnes of salt are applied to roads across Canada, much of which makes its way into nearby soils, vegetation and bodies of water. In many urban golf courses, it collects in water ponds that are used for irrigation through summer, impacting the health of valued trees.

Ionic Solutions will draw water from irrigation ponds and remove the salt using our low-power desalination technology before returning the desalinated water back to the irrigation pond. This water will be used throughout summer to support the ecological health of the facility, minimizing the golf club’s annual water footprint.  

As an additional potential value, with the appropriate jurisdictional buy-in, the recovered salty concentrate could be used to resalt the roads for the next season, saving communities a cost item in their budgets, and creating a circular economy solution for this problematic issue.