Municipalities may pay more instead of cutting back on plowing, salting
Road salt tripled in cost this year compared to last winter, which gave local public works directors a tough choice - salt fewer roads or massively increase budgets and hope the prices don't last.
Unlike some Lake County communities, many in Cook County say they went with the second option rather than mess with a sacred cow of municipal services - snow plowing.
In Arlington Heights, Public Works Director Scott Shirley is expecting to spend almost $600,000 on road salt this year. He usually spends more like $250,000 a year. The increase makes sense when you look at the price - last year salt cost about $41 a ton. This year, the price varied from $73 to $138 a ton, Shirley said.
Despite the costs, even most cul-de-sacs were salted by Monday afternoon, Shirley said.
"The board decided not to change our level of service this year," he said. "It's hard because the price of salt is a little bit of a moving target. We're hoping the prices will go down much like the price of fuel has."
Like other municipalities, Shirley is using beet juice in addition to salt this year to give drivers additional traction. So far, 17 of the village's 23 salt trucks had been fitted for the liquid anti-icing agent, he said.
Buffalo Grove saw similar price increases but is staying its snow plowing course, said Rick Kuhl, deputy director of public works.
"At this point, we're not making any changes," Kuhl said. "And Monday, everything went excellent."
Elk Grove, Rolling Meadows and Schaumburg are also opting to pay more instead of cutting back. This year Schaumburg budgeted $880,000 - about double last year's amount, said Scott Weinstock, Schaumburg's director of engineering and public works.
"The decision was made to maintain services as they've always been," Weinstock said.
Earlier this month, an Illinois Department of Transportation spokesman said the state will be cutting back on use of salt this winter.
Milton Sees, secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, announced during a news conference on winter preparations that salt conservation practices will be instituted.
"This conservation effort will allow us to better utilize the resources available to IDOT and still provide a safe means of travel," said Sees in a statement.
The agency has 3,900 employees and more than 1,900 pieces of equipment to deploy as needed. Last year, IDOT spent more than $86 million on snow removal efforts. The agency used nearly 322,000 tons of salt last winter season, compared with the previous high the last five years of about 197,000 tons in 2006-07.
Many Lake and McHenry agencies said they won't be salting less-traveled routes and parking lots as much this year. They are also cutting back on salt during the height of big storms, during overnight hours and on side streets, dead ends and cul-de-sacs.
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