JEFF KAROUB, Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — The reward for surviving last winter’s frigid temperatures and record snowfall, several states are learning, is drastic price increases for road salt — and that’s if they can even get it.
Replenishing stockpiles is proving challenging, especially for some Midwestern states, after salt supplies were depleted to tame icy roads last winter. And price increases of at least 20 percent have been common in places including Boston and Raleigh, North Carolina.
“Everybody is kind of scrambling around right now, contacting anybody they know who may have some salt available,” said Fred Pausch, chief of the County Engineers Association of Ohio.
Some local governments are avoiding the problem thanks to multi-year contracts or secured bids. Chicago, for example, used roughly three times more salt last winter — 436,000 tons — than it did in 2012-2013, but the city has locked-in rates based on a contract negotiated a few years ago.
Other states aren’t so lucky.
In Ohio, where more than 1 million tons of salt was used on state roads last year — a nearly 60 percent increase over the average — last year’s average price was $35 per ton. This year, 15 counties received bids of more than $100 per ton, and 10 counties received no bids from suppliers.
Most of Ohio’s 88 counties have locked in prices between $50 and $80 per ton. To ease the pain for other counties, the state recently secured about 170,000 tons of additional salt.
“The demand for salt is simply outpacing the supply that is available,” said Steve Faulkner, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Transportation.
In Michigan, like Ohio, local governments are allowed to join a network for bidding purposes, and the state seeks competitive bids each year from four vendors. But even those efforts couldn’t prevent a spike: Michigan has seen prices jump by 46 percent, to $65 per ton.
On a recent weekday outside Detroit, a massive dump truck backed into a domed building and dropped about 50 tons of road salt onto a growing mound at a facility operated by the Washtenaw County Road Commission. The agency is paying $76 a ton for its preseason fill-up compared to about $34 last year, a 120 percent jump.
Part of the problem is that salt mines are being challenged by numerous local governments “trying to replenish their supply at the same time,” said Lori Roman, president of the Salt Institute, a trade group based in suburban Washington, D.C.
“It’s just a situation where you can’t necessarily get all the salt mined and get it where it needs to go as fast as it’s demanded,” she said, noting that the group doesn’t collect information related to prices or production issues.
For road officials, that translates into having to conserve and be creative. In many places, brine is added to salt to boost its effectiveness. Officials also are buying trucks that can, among other things, spread salt in the morning and clean streets later in the day.
North Carolina’s capital city, which was left with about 10 percent of its 4,000-ton salt capacity after Raleigh was hit by more winter storms than usual, recently signed a three-year contract for salt costing about $110 per ton annually. That’s a 25 percent increase, according to city officials.
In Indiana, road salt bids have increased by an average of 57 percent, ranging from nearly $73 to $106 per ton.
Boston is among those breathing a sigh of relief. Interim Public Works Commissioner Mike Dennehy, dubbed Boston’s “snow czar,” said the city bought about 80 percent of its capacity at last season’s cheaper prices of $45 and $49 a ton. The city will be charged this winter’s prices, which are about 20 percent higher, for the rest of its supply.
“I’m waiting to hear back from our vendor,” said Randal Brown, director of Southwick’s Department of Public Works yesterday. “We’re going to jump in on the state’s bid – I believe its through the Hampden County Council of Governments – and they have solicited bids and are in the process of awarding that contract.”
Brown said that the town has been told that the road salt contract would be awarded by September 25, but that he isn’t aware of who the vendor is or what the price will be yet, although last year’s vendor, Cargill, has put in a bid as well.
“I have heard the prices may be going up, but I’m not sure by how much,” he said.
“Based on the number and severity of storms, I can tell you last year was a pretty bad year,” he said. “We have budgeted $50,000 for salt and typically we run over that as part of our winter operational budget for highways and roads.”
“I want to say last year we spent double that for salt,” he said. “Last year, we used about 1,800 tons (of salt), which came out to about $55 a ton.”
“We order it (road salt) in 500-ton lots and we do that a couple of times throughout the season,” said Casey Berube, deputy superintendent of the City of Westfield’s DPW.
Touching on how vendors supply the cities and towns, Berube said that the countywide contracts are beneficial for municipalities.
“The cities and towns get a better rate than say, a parking lot plow guy,” he said.
As far as what this winter will look like for Westfield, Berube said it’s too early to predict.
“Last year was a cold, cold year and that’s why we blew through so much of it,” he said. “(The road salt budget) gets lumped in with the snow and ice account, so you’re allowed to overspend on it.”
“Last year we had about 3,000 and 3,500 tons of salt and I’d expect about the same this year,” Berube said. “We paid about $54.68 per ton and about $13.63 per ton of sand. So we’re in the $190,000 to $200,000 range for salt last year.”
Follow Jeff Karoub at https://twitter.com/jeffkaroub.
Westfield News staff writer Peter Francis and Associated Press writers Charles D. Wilson in Indianapolis and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.
