TORONTO -- Toronto uses so much salt on its roads that some city creeks are becoming saltier than the ocean, year round — a surprising conclusion in a new study that is among the reasons city council is debating ways to cut down on salt. Coating city roads in at least 130,000 tonnes of rock salt costs the city upwards of $11 million a year, but the true costs could be much higher than that when damage to shoes, bikes, cars and the environment is factored in, says Councillor Mike Layton. “This is a toxic substance,” Layton said in an interview. “I would hazard to guess we are being quite wasteful and haphazard in our application of salt.”