Rock salt prices skyrocketing this winter

Tonawanda, NY (WBEN) It's a case of sticker shock for area highway superintendents as the price of rock salt has jumped as we approach the winter months.

"The price this year went up 57 percent, which will more than double what we need budgeted for taking care of the roads in the town,," says Town of Tonawanda Highway Superintendent Ted Rymarczyk. He says that's going to cripple most towns and villages financially. He notes all municipalities involved are on the Erie County bid, so this is affecting almost all of the communities in northern Erie County.

Rymarczyk hopes one thing doesn't happen again: a rock salt shortage. "If that was to happen again, to try to get it outsourced and try to find it somewhere else is very expensive," he says. His order is a standing one, at 7,500 tons. "Some years we use less, some years we use more. Last year we did use more, so we're going to have to come up with new ways of salting and plowing, and we're in the process. where we can calibrate all our trucks, so we're going to actually try to find out if we use less, if it will do the same amount of roads as long as we use the brine that we use to mix in with it," he says.

Brine is effective, but only under the right conditions, warns Rymarczyk. "The best way to put it down is actually put it down when the road is dry, and it activates when the snow hits it. But to do the whole town, we have just under 400 lane miles in the town, and doing all liquids in the town really isn't something we can do. But smaller towns and stuff, they they can do something like that," notes Rymarczyk.

Could an El Nino winter help with supply matters? He says it depends on how mild it is. "ice is worse than snow, so if it's us hovering around 32, then that would be worse than us getting a lot of snow for the winter, because ice changes conditions within minutes. Snow takes time, and ice is really hard to deal with," explains Rymarczyk. "You have to actually use more salt to deal with ice because it's other it freezes so quick. So I'm hoping it's going to be warmer, but when we say warmer, around 40, not 32."

He says most communities are in the same boat. "We initially haven't run out of salt, even the year that there was a shortage. We don't run out of salt, but everybody around us, I think last year we lent more some salt. They're basically within the town, and brine-wise, we have given brine to the city of Tonawanda because we make our own brine. So it only costs us about eight cents a gallon to make our own. So we have a big enough facility where we can do it. So we actually make that out of rock salt. So, so the brine solution is made out of rock salt. Yes, we actually have a machine in our building that turns the salt and water into our our brine product that we use," he adds.

Rymarczyk says no reason was given for the rise in rock salt prices.