More salt may mean less ice on city roads this winter

Saleem Khattak wants to increase your intake of salt this winter.

It’s OK, he says, it will be good for you.

Khattak is manager of the city’s street division, the guy responsible for overseeing the plowing and sanding of city streets after it snows. After last winter’s relatively harsh winter, when snow seemed to hang around longer than your ne’er-do-well brother-in-law, Khattak reckons it’s time to try something different.

His bosses on the City Council agreed early this week, giving him extra money, even as they cut funding for other city services, including that totally obnoxious police helicopter.

Khattak said he received an additional $200,000 in his budget, in part, to buy a sanding mix that contains 20 percent salt, a significant increase from the 6 percent salt mix the city has been using for years.

The remainder of the money will be used to pay the salaries of Colorado Springs Utilities workers who are called in to help plow city streets during big snowstorms.

Salt is one of the most basic molecules on Earth — and also one of the most plentiful. Scientists have estimated salt deposits under Kansas alone could supply the entire world’s salt needs for the next 250,000 years. Hey, Kansans need something to brag about.

Still, that doesn’t necessarily make it cheap.

The anti-skid material the salt is mixed with — essentially gravel aggregate crushed to a certain angularity — is $5 to $6 a ton. That aggregate gives tires traction in snow and, to a lesser extent, on ice. But salt — which melts snow and, eventually, ice — is $64 a ton. Using a higher concentration of salt will obviously cost more, but Khattak said he doesn’t want a repeat of last winter, when ice lingered for days in intersections because the weather stayed cold after a storm moved on.

“We basically got to the point where an extended event kept on going, and we went from one event to the next without warming,” Khattak said. Snow pros call storms “events,” because for them work begins just before the snow falls, when liquid anti-icing is sprayed on problematic intersections and hills. The anti-icing lowers the temperature at which precipitation freezes. The “event” isn’t over until the gravel and salt mix is swept up, usually within 72 hours.

Khattak said the additional salt shouldn’t cause corrosion problems in today’s galvanized vehicles nor lead to increased road deterioration. In fact, he said the Colorado Department of Transportation has been using a 20 percent salt mixture on Academy Boulevard and Nevada Avenue for years.

The city couldn’t make the switch to more salt last year because it needed to get the permission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates the mixes to prevent environmental damage.

Khattak is obviously hoping his crews don’t have to spread the superduper salt and gravel mix very often this winter. But winter weather in Colorado Springs has always been unpredictable, and perhaps will be even more so as the effects of global warming become more evident, he said.

“Unfortunately, global warming doesn’t mean no more snow,” he said. “It just means a changing weather pattern.”

Tell me your commuter tales: 636-0197 or bill.mckeown@gazette.com