Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A recent shortage of rock salt in Western New York has provided a slight challenge for a number of local municipalities when dealing with the winter weather on the roadways.
According to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, the primary provider of rock salt, American Rock Salt, out in Livingston County has seen a significant reduction in the amount of rock salt that they could deliver, as the demand this winter has been higher in years past. He also says the company is dealing with a bit of a driver issue.
"We have rock salt, we've sent trucks to the mines to get it. I also want to thank the City of Buffalo. The City of Buffalo had some excess rock salt, and they provided it to us," said Poloncarz earlier this week. "But we're picking up the salt, we're bringing it for the county, and we're also delivering it to other highway barns for local towns and villages in Erie County that rely on our contract."
One local municipality that is taking advanced measures to ensure they have plenty of salt for the remainder of the winter is the Town of Tonawanda.
"We're only going to be salting the main roads in the town, as well as the intersections that have stop signs at them. The entire town will not be salted," said Emminger earlier this week with WBEN. "Hopefully we'll get an order, we are waiting for the order, but us and most other municipalities in the region are waiting for orders too. We're just just advising people to take it maybe a little slower on the roads as you're going through Tonawanda."
Emminger says the town has about 1,000 tons of rock salt in their barns, and if they salted the entire town, it takes around 250 tons.
"The 1,000 tons that are there, worst case scenario - assuming we have normal weather, whatever that is - we should be fine. But we won't be salting the entire town until we get that order of salt in," Emminger said.
Emminger knows that other municipalities are awaiting orders of rock salt, as they were expecting an order late last week that did not come in.
While Jamie Dussing, Clarence Highway Supervisor, has not yet hit crisis mode with the town's supply of rock salt, he certainly hasn't seen a winter like this in a couple years.
"The salt usage was almost nothing last year," said Dussing in an interview with WBEN. "There was quite a stockpile out in Livingston County at the supplier, but it was depleted pretty quickly, as we've had back-to-back storms, a lot of snow down in the Southern Tier, and just back-to-back little snow squalls and freezing temperatures. So salt usage has been way up this year."
Dussing estimates Clarence has about a third of its stockpile ready to go in the salt barn. They, too, have some salt ordered, and they anticipate deliveries from the local supplier to start up again in the next couple of days.
"I did get off the phone with the American Rock Salt company this morning, they are working three shifts, 24 hours a day, trying to get what they can out of the ground. But you can only deliver the supply that you have, and they don't want to deplete the supply every day," Dussing explained. "They're pretty confident that within 3-to-5 days, they could be back up and running, if we see a break in the weather in Western New York."
Dussing says all highway supervisors in Erie County have been in close contact over the last several days, ensuring that everyone has an adequate supply of rock salt going forward. If there is a particular municipality that is dealing with a shortage, Dussing would be more than happy to chip in to help.
"There's 25 towns in Erie County, and the superintendents in Erie County are pretty tight. We email several times a day, and certainly reach out to our neighbors if we're in crisis," he said. "That opportunity, or the request hasn't happened as of yet, but if we were to take a call from one of our neighbors that was certainly in dire straits for salt, we would do everything we could to help them."
At the county level, Public Works Commissioner Bill Geary says they're about 20% full at their salt barns.
"We usually have 15,000 ton on-hand between 10 different salt locations throughout the county. We have been seeing delays in receiving our deliveries," said Geary during an appearance with WBEN on Thursday. "We've been in communication with the rock salt suppliers. We've added our own trucks to go haul, we hired some outside contractors last week, and as we bring our supplies up, we're offloading some of those to the local municipalities as well."
Geary has also been in constant communication with other leaders across the county, as well as the state, making sure that not one particular community is dealing with any issues with rock salt.
"This has been a pretty good winter. We've been plowing since the beginning of December. We've been salting probably since late November, and it's put a bigger demand on the supplies, and what they can bring out of the ground and get out to the municipalities," Geary said.
In his chats with American Rock Salt, Geary believes this rock salt shortage is only a temporary issue locally, but admits there are backup plans in place in case this does become long-term and more impactful.
"Right now, our contracts with one supplier, that supplier we communicate with, they're doing their best to meet the demands out there. And with us adding on some of our own haul trucks, it's getting supplies faster to our locations, so that those deliveries coming out of the mines can hit some of the other areas," Geary noted.
With the rock salt shortage this winter, Geary says this allows officials in Erie County to continue to refine operations any way they can.
"It is a finite resource, rock salt. It's corrosive, it's tough on concrete, it's tough on your car, it's tough on our equipment," he said. "Right now, there's some liquid additives you can use out there, but the liquid additives, again, they come with their own limitations as well. And right now, we just don't feel that the cost to apply those liquid additives, all the equipment that has to go on top of a truck that's already at $250,000 a truck, then add in another $30,000 or $40,000. Rock salt seems to be our best choice, but we're continuing to work to see if there's alternatives come out.
"At one time, we were looking at different brine mixtures from the cheese industry, different mashes, even the micro brew industry. There's some industries that some of their waste could be our benefit, and it just hasn't proved fruitful enough yet. But we're confident that we have to come up with a solution for the long-term, because I don't think salt is always going to be available for us."