Aurora readies for second winter of 'sensible salting'
Aurora public works crews say they're ready to combat slippery roads this winter with the same “sensible salting” technique that saved the city money last year.
Chief operations officer Rosario DeLeon said Aurora's approach to salting now depends on pavement temperature rather than air temperature.
Pavement may be a few degrees warmer than air, he said, which allows crews to apply less salt to get the same results.
Using less salt actually can be more effective at melting snow and keeping roads safe because the type of sodium chloride used on streets only is effective to a certain threshold.
“Once you start using beyond that amount, you start wasting the material,” DeLeon said.
Aurora first used pavement temperature to decide how much salt to apply last winter. Comparable amounts of snow fell during that season and the previous season, DeLeon said, but the city used 7,000 fewer tons of salt in 2009-10 than in 2008-09.
Purchasing a smaller amount of salt 18,000 tons instead of 25,000 saved the city about $450,000, he estimated.
Those savings were possible because the city's salt contract does not lock the streets division into buying a precise amount, DeLeon said.
When the city orders its salt for the season, employees make an educated guess of how much to buy. The price per ton remains the same if the city orders between 80 percent and 120 percent of the estimated amount, DeLeon said.
Salt ordered for this year is beginning to pile up in the city's storage dome, Brett Weiler, streets superintendent, said.
“Salt is coming in, I'm stocking up my dome,” Weiler said. “We've already started calibrating our salt spreaders.”
Applying less road salt also helps preserve the water quality of rivers and streams, said Stephen McCracken, a watershed expert who studies salt's affect on waterways with the DuPage River Salt Creek Work Group.
“Salt, unlike other pollutants, doesn't break down,” McCracken said. “We can definitely detect the effects of salt in waterways.”