You've always been told everything is good in moderation. As Curtis Schick shows us, a new report says it's for people who plow.

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EAST FISHKILL, N.Y. -- It looks like your standard snow plow. Plow. Check. Salt spreader. Check. A computer that regulates salt put down by air temperature and truck speed so the right amount of product is spread on the road. Check.

"They're out there as much as 14 hours, whatever it takes to clean the roads. This takes that off of them. The computer automatically puts down the salt," said John Hickman, Town of East Fishkill Supervisor.

And with road salt still the cheapest way to deal with snow covered roads, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies thinks more municipalities should do what East Fishkill is doing. The Institute's new study shows if trucks were loaded more precisely and salt spread more effectively roads would get cleared using 20 percent less salt. Researchers say that's less salt in the water supply.

"The original notion was that the salt that was applied in the winter would run off and leave the water shed with the rain and snow melt. It turns out that salt is not leaving the water shed nearly as fast as we thought," said Stuart Findlay, Cary Institute Researcher.

Now, not only did the report find that using the right amount of salt can help environmentally, it can also help financially.

"If you have to use road salt, at least you can put down the minimum amount to do the job," said Hickman.

Hickman said the town put computers on the trucks in the winter of 2008 and says they used 3,000 fewer tons of salt that year. He says it saved the town $240,000.

"When we checked the budget last year, the savings paid for the computers and then some," said Hickman.