Salt prices draw attention

Most communities are biting the bullet on road salt prices that in some cases have more than tripled, but the situation is not passing without notice.

"We're actively looking into this," said Robyn Ziegler, spokesman for the Illinois Attorney General.

Nine communities, including Winthrop Harbor in Lake County, and three municipal organizations, including the DuPage Mayors & Managers Conference, have contacted Madigan's office regarding widely varying prices for road salt.

Ziegler said the complaints are being reviewed. "We are actively seeing what we can do to assist them," she said.

Last winter was the worst in 40 years, causing entities to use much more salt than in an average year. Lake County Division of Transportation crews, for example, were called out 80 times and used 23,000 tons of salt compared with an average of 14,000 to 16,000 tons.

Similar scenarios were repeated throughout the northern Illinois area and in other states.

High demand coupled with interruptions that shortened the barge shipping season - and intense competition for the barge space - strained salt supply, according to the Salt Institute, an industry association based in Alexandria, Va.

Concerned because they ran out of salt last year, entities increased their bids to buy more this year, according to the group.

"There is, in fact, an inexhaustible supply of salt, but the logistics bottlenecks and current market condition are augmented this year by a severe capacity crunch of historic proportion as we rebuild stocks in the 'pipeline,'" according to a fact sheet published last month Richard Hanneman, Salt Institute president.

What that has meant are stiff price increases for users and other changes. Contracts that typically obligated users to obtain as little as 70 percent of an order have been upped to 100 percent, for example.

State Sen. Pam Althoff, a Republican from Crystal Lake, who has been at the forefront of the issue, has introduced two bills to assist communities hammered by high prices.

Any entity that orders salt through the Illinois Department of Central Management Services and did not receive an initial bid last summer would be able to access an emergency fund, she said.

Entities would be able to apply for reimbursement of the difference between the "average" salt price and what they paid this year, she added.

"We're working on those numbers now," she said.

Local state legislators also say they will meet with CMS to determine if the salt procurement process can be improved.