Closely-spaced storms hamper salt re-supply efforts
Sunday's New York Times warns that "local governments in New England and in the Midwest are running critically low on road salt, the result of a stream of winter weather that has hit the regions in recent months." Reporter Katie Zezima included our reaction:
“It’s supply and demand,” said Richard L. Hanneman, president of the Salt Institute, a nonprofit trade association. “We’re scrambling. We haven’t heard of any agency that hasn’t been able to keep the roads open or safe, but there’s a lot of anxiety.”
Public works agencies report difficulty in securing re-supply. In response, Zezima says:
Mark Klein, a spokesman for Cargill, which supplies salt to Vermont, said deliveries, which come via train or truck, were hampered by the bad weather. Some towns in the Midwest said they had been told that barges bringing salt to their area were unable to cross the Great Lakes because of ice.“They’re running down on their stocks early on, and we continue to build supply in,” Mr. Klein said. “It would be nice to get a break in the storms and let the stocks build back up again. In any winter we would be replenishing throughout the winter. But because this winter is more inclement, it’s causing the earlier drawdown of supplies, which no one really forecast.”
In some cases it is not the large storms that are sapping resources, but the many small ones that just coat the road, making them too slick for drivers.
“I think a good 16 to 18 inches is a lot easier to manage than the two-, three-, four-inch storms that come in every 24 hours,” said Bruce Berry, the public works director in Amherst, N.H.
We can all agree: there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
