Metro-area cities anticipating the rising cost of road salt

Cost overruns could make for a bumpy summer.

By MARIA ELENA BACA, Star Tribune

Last update: October 1, 2008 - 11:37 PM

Double-digit increases in the price of road salt this year probably won't be felt on metro-area roads this winter, but cost overruns could make for a bumpy summer.

"We're probably not going to change our snow policy and de-icing policy; it's going to create a budget shortage somewhere else," said Shoreview public works director Mark Maloney, echoing a common theme. "When we prioritize service delivery, ice and snow removal is at the top. It's considered to be a safety issue."

This year, 376 cities and counties ordered 245,477 tons of road salt through the state-run Cooperative Purchasing Venture, which coordinated salt bids on their behalf late last spring. The average cost was $53.05 a ton, up an average of 11.2 percent from last year. Each city's cost varies depending on the volume ordered, and the distance the salt will have to be transported from supply terminals along the Mississippi River. The salt is carried north by barge from mines in Louisiana and Missouri.

The state cooperative's largest supplier is Cargill Inc. Mark Klein, a representative from the Minneapolis-based company, said the company would not discuss the pricing of salt during its bidding season. He deferred questions to the Salt Institute, a trade organization based in Fairfax, Va.

The Salt Institute referred reporters to its website, where a statement blamed the disruption of four weeks of lock and dam closures on the Upper Mississippi River, a shortage of salt mine workers, increased orders from communities that actually ran out of salt last year and increasing fuel prices, which raise their overall operating costs.

Still, Minnesota cities in the cooperative got off relatively easy. The city of St. Paul joined with Ramsey County to bid last spring for this season's road salt. St. Paul officials were told they were lucky to get a bid for $62 a ton, up 47.6 percent from last year's $42, said street maintenance engineer Gary Erichson, who noted that cities in Illinois were paying more than double that amount. Ramsey County is paying only slightly less and transporting salt from the terminals themselves.

Since communities are unwilling to skimp on winter road maintenance, cost overruns may come out of summer maintenance projects, such as asphalt patching, street sweeping and other road work.

Rising costs for fuel and supplies, especially petroleum-based asphalt, aren't helping either.

Still, several metro communities said they have modest stockpiles from last year. They also pointed to intensive salt-conservation campaigns that combine custom computerized weather forecasting and calibrated sanders that regulate the amount of salt distributed on the roadway.

"We're always looking for efficiencies in salt usage," said Ramsey County maintenance engineer Kathy Jaschke. "Thirty years ago, drivers were commended for how much salt they could put on the road. They were commended, and now it's the opposite. We want to keep the roads safe, but we want to do it using as little salt as possible."

City engineers have the job of aligning supplies with their predictions for the season. Some years with light snowfall are heavy salt-use years because small snowstorms require about the same salt use as big ones.

"On a good year, we'll have some left over, and in a bad year we'll have to get some more," said Eden Prairie public works director Gene Dietz. "Plowing is just something we'll have to do."

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409