Story originally printed in the Holmen Courier or online at www.holmencourier.com
Published - Thursday, February 21, 2008
State DOT, county won’t pass the salt
Staff writer
It’s going to start looking like a beach scene soon because the only thing municipalities have to put on snowy roads is sand.
The state has halted all sales of salt to municipalities in order to maintain state and interstate highway systems. La Crosse County also has halted sales of pure salt in order to ensure there is enough salt to maintain county roads. The county continues to provide a sand/salt mixture.
Bob Haines, Holmen public works director, said the salt supply is limited, but sand is still readily available from the county. Holmen uses primarily sand, Haines said, in part because of the high cost of salt.
“It’s an unusual year,” Haines said. “We have been over budget for quite some time already. Our salt and sand budget for all of 2008 is $22,000. Our expenses for November-December were $22,000 which is the budget for the whole 2008 year. In 2005 we had $29,000 worth of salt and sand. This season we’re already up to $30,000 for salt and sand. And we still have another month to go, and maybe more.”
According to Haines, Holmen has used 1,550 tons of sand and 225 tons of salt so far this winter.
“We’ve always kept the budget equal each year,” Haines said. “We budget for an average winter. This is not an average year.”
Like Haines and others in his position, Wade Peterson, West Salem public works director, is wishing he had more salt.
“We don’t use much salt to begin with,” Peterson said. “But we have a small supply and have received a letter from the county that we’re not going to get anymore. It’s kind of nonexistent. We don’t use a lot, so it’s not a huge concern.”
He said the salt/sand mixture was running low. “The county says they’ll continue to supply that,” he said, “so I have some confidence we’ll have sand/salt mixture.”
Bangor Public Works Director Cecil Rolfe said the village uses a salt mixture from the county.
While he said they get it delivered every week, they’ve gone through a lot of it.
“(The) budget’s not good,” Rolfe said. “We have probably used three times as much sand as we’ve used in the past.
The town of Hamilton has decided to stop providing salt for roads and will use sand instead, and the town of Onalaska recently announced it is no longer sharing its salt supply with town residents.
The day after the city of Onalaska submitted a purchase order for more salt to put on snow-covered roads, the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota suspended all municipal purchases of salt in order to fulfill state needs due to the extraordinary amount of snow the area has received so far this winter.
Jarrod Holter, Onalaska’s city engineer, said the city’s budget is in good shape for snow removal, but the salt supply is all but gone. To make matters worse, Holter said the price of salt — if the city can get any — has risen to $52 per ton, up from about $33 per ton.
According to Holter, Onalaska has a supply of sand with a small percentage of salt mixed in at the shop.
Contact Jo Anne Killeen at (608) 786-6816 or joanne.killeen@lee.net.
All stories copyright 2006 Holmen Courier and other attributed sources.