Towns seek new solutions to rising salt prices

High salt prices have some towns getting creative when it comes to keeping ice off their roads. A couple of recent articles have examined solutions to salt prices that have almost doubled since last year, a rise which has strained many towns' already-squeezed budgets.

The Wall Street Journal reports many towns are abandoning traditional road salt outright, or making their own concoctions. "We're sort of experimenting," says Ted Hubbard, the chief deputy county engineer in Hamilton County, Ohio, where road salt is being mixed with ash residue from coal-fired power plants. Other towns have tried garlic salt, molasses and "a rum-production byproduct that smells like soy sauce," write Ilan Brat and Timothy W. Martin. (Read more)

Some Midwestern states and localities, on the other hand, are finding that buying salt together is helping to defray costs and combat price gouging, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Investigators also found price discrepancies in Indiana and Kentucky, where some local governments were paying up to 50 percent less than their counterparts just across the border in Ohio," writes Scott Williams. As a result, the Ohio Department of Transportation is recommending interstate cooperation with states such as Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa in purchasing road salt, saying that "coordination instead of competition among other states could reduce the likelihood of unbalanced shortages and supplies." (Read more)

To read The Rural Blog's previous coverage of road salt, click here and here.