James Brownell responds to Cary report

MILLBROOK — Scientists at the Cary Institute presented their newest report on road salt usage at a press conference held at the town of East Fishkill Highway Department in Hopewell Junction in early December. Robert Schlesinger, Cary Institute president, and Victoria Kelly, one of the scientists who authored the report, and East Fishkill town Supervisor John Hickman presented the results of East Fishkill’s use of salt minimizing techniques.

The town’s capital investment of $140,000 in 2009 to retrofit its trucks with temperature, speed, conveyor and spreader sensors more than paid for itself in one year. By installing salt regulators on its trucks, East Fishkill reduced its use of salt last winter compared to 2008-09 by 3,483 tons and saved $243,810 in the first year.

“East Fishkill is proof that environmental and economic decision-making can be complementary,†said Hickman.

But do these techniques work for every town?  

“Not for Washington,†said Jim Brownell, town of Washington highway superintendent, who has been out in more than 600 snowstorms in his 29-year career. He said his number one priority is keeping the roads safe so that a firetruck or an ambulance can reach a home during an emergency. After studying the report’s list of actions, which could reduce road salt usage, Brownell responded, based on his own experience.

Would using real time information systems about road and weather conditions help?

Brownell observed that the county and state already subscribe to this information and that towns can contact the county at no cost to get data if necessary. Usually the information is not so pertinent at the local road level because the services survey very large areas and major highways.

Brownell said he makes his decisions on the mix of salt and sand in the trucks based on his detailed knowledge of the town’s highways — it’s always colder on Tower Hill Road — and studying radar weather maps available for free on the Internet. Brownell estimates that this avoids spending $1,500 to $2,500 a year on commercially-available road weather information systems.

Calibrating equipment properly is important if a municipality has trucks with regulators, which Washington does not because it uses a mixture of salt and sand depending on whether hard or dirt roads are being treated and the severity of the storm.

“We rarely run straight salt. It’s too expensive,†Brownell said.

The Cary study recommends that trucks only be filled with the amount of salt necessary for the run.

“Drivers tend to use what they load, which can often be more than is needed,†according to the report.

That’s not true for Washington, Brownell contends, observing that his crew spreads only what is needed and always leaves a quantity in the truck to act as ballast.

What about installing road temperature sensors in the trucks?

Brownell has his own handheld device, and agreed that if a road department had all hard-topped roads and trucks equipped with regulators that this might be a good investment. With Washington’s mix of road surfaces, which vary enormously in surface temperatures, these sensors would not be very helpful.

“The boss makes the determination,†said Brownell confidently.

Another Cary recommendation, brining highways with a de-icing mixture to prevent ice from forming, is also impractical on Washington’s dirt roads and doesn’t work for all storms. In order to treat road surfaces with liquid brine it would require the purchase of a new truck with tanks at a cost of around $80,000.

The study suggests reducing the salt content of stored sand to 5 percent to keep it from freezing. Washington has a simpler solution; it doesn’t use any salt on the stored sand. Crews treat the sand with calcium magnesium before mixing it in with the salt in the big sheds.

Using alternative de-icers is another expensive idea, based on Brownell’s experience.

“The alternatives are costly, and they aren’t any better than salt. They all have their own environmental problems,†Brownell observed.

According to the report, some alternatives are more effective at lower temperatures than salt and have less aquatic toxicity, but they can be as much as 26 times more expensive. The Cary study recommends using them in vulnerable areas like bridges, wetlands, roads near well fields or public water supplies. The report itself admits that there is “no perfect alternative to road salt.â€

Lastly, Brownell disputes the idea that “salt efficiency modules should be added to existing training†for drivers.

“Our drivers get regular training in snow removal,†Brownell said. “It’s the supervisor who tells them what to do and how to do it.â€

The Cary Institute’s special report, “Road Salt: Moving Toward the Solution,†available online at caryinstitute.org, documents the impact that salt has on human health, road surfaces and the environment. Nationwide, between 10 and 20 million tons of salt are used each year to keep roads snow-free. The ice disappears but the salt accumulates in watersheds, impacting drinking water and streams and rivers.

“Because it can take decades for road salt to flush out of a watershed, increases in concentrations of salt may be seen even after its use has stopped,†the report states.

Kelly monitors chloride and sodium presence in Wappinger’s Creek near Millbrook. Since 1985 the levels have more than doubled and road salt is the primary cause.

Every year the town of Washington buys around 1,600 tons of salt for the town of Washington’s and village of Millbrook’s streets, highways and dirt roads. Because of the economic cost, the town and village, like Pine Plains, cut the salt with as much sand as possible to make it go further.

Everyone is looking for a better solution, but each community has a unique set of circumstances, and salt reduction alternatives that work in one place are not necessarily applicable everywhere. The good news, according to Brownell, is that black-ice conditions seem to be occurring less frequently, and that so far, then number of snowstorms this year is well behind recent history.