Prior Lake will soon have the sweetest streets around.

The city will be a test site for an experiment that involves pouring molasses on its streets. It's one of a series of measures the city is taking to make the de-icing of wintertime streets less environmentally damaging and more effective.

The city's public works department got a grant from the state's Local Road Research Board to test molasses as a means of attaching a brine solution to its roads before snowstorms to keep the snow from bonding with the pavement and creating dangerous conditions.

The city also is using a sugar-beet-based product called Geomelt to help reduce the use of salt and minimize the amount of harmful pollutants cascading into lakes and wetlands in the winter.

Joe Wiita, streets and utilities operations foreman, said folks won't smell anything but will notice dark streaks. 'Spraying won't start until temperatures drop below around 15 degrees," he said.

For more information, see the city's website at www.cityofpriorlake.com. The Prior Lake Maintenance Center is at 952-447-9830.

DAVID PETERSON