Winter is making a statement this month and with it comes tons of salt on our roads. As your town or city works to clear snow and ice from the roads, you'll see plow trucks spilling salt or sand on the road or a mix of both.
What You Need To Know
- Most municipalities use a combination of plowing, salt and a salt and sand mixture to help keep the roads clear of ice and snow
- Greece DPW uses an average of 15,000 ton of salt each year
- The Town of Greece has eleven sidewalk routes which can take up to five hours to complete a single pass depending on conditions
- Snow plows cover more than 300 center lane miles of roadway throughout the town of Greece
The town of Greece and its fleet of 24 trucks helps clear and pre-treat 42 square miles of roadways. That's more than 300 lane miles, so road salt is the go-to here.
"We have two salt buildings," said Kirk Morris, commissioner of Public Works for the town of Greece. "For a town our size, we realized a few years ago we wanted to have as much salt on the ground at our highway department as possible, so we built another salt building. You get the salt on early-on to prevent the ice from forming."
Morris says salt is effective at melting ice, but loses its effectiveness once the temperature falls below 15 degrees, so as it gets colder they add liquid magnesium chloride to the mix to help. Another alternative is a salt and sand mixture. The sand doesn't help melt the ice, but increases traction. Sand gives the road some grit.
"A lot of this is based on what kind of event we are experiencing. Is it heavy snow? Is it very windy? Is it very cold? Or is it continuous snow over the course of several days? Does it look like at some point the sun is going to come out. The sun is our best friend," said Morris.
Morris says Greece uses an average of 15,000 tons of salt each winter. They formulate what they think they'll need for the season.
"I always say it is a science that you can expect to change on a moment's notice. So you do your best with what you are looking at. The weather forecast and the job you folks do giving us a heads up on what's anticipated and what is coming and then you wait and see if Mother Nature is going to go ahead and change her mind," said Morris.
There's no perfect solution to keep the roads clear in the winter, but the tools available to public works crews continues to increase and that's good for driver safety on the roads.
The New York State Department of Transportation says New York State is the largest consumer of road salt in North America. The NYS Thruway Authority says its average annual usage is approximately 180,000 tons of salt.