Road salt costs up; demand constant

Amsterdam Supervisor Thomas DiMezza is hoping it won’t snow much this winter. That’s because his town is paying twice as much for road salt as it did last winter.

Most municipal leaders in the region are in a similar bind, paying anywhere from 40 percent to 200 percent more than the last time they had to clear the roads.

Amsterdam has a contract from Montgomery County to take care of county roads, DiMezza said.

“Thankfully we raised our snowplow contracts, but I still don’t think it’s enough to get the job done,” he said. “The town of Amsterdam is not rural. We have a lot of traffic, two hospitals and nursing homes and we have to take care of the roads. When you’re talking hills that people have to get down, you can’t just put sand on the road.”

In the city of Schenectady, Carl Olsen, commissioner for general services, said the city’s salt budget is up about 50 percent this year. Salt can be mixed with chipped stone to make it last longer, but the mixture isn’t effective in all conditions, he said. Olsen said the city will pay $55.74 per ton this year verses $36.26 a year ago.

“We have over $300,000 budgeted for rock salt this year,” Olsen said. “That’s ridiculous. That’s twice as much money as we have to pay for asphalt to pave our roads. It’s becoming outrageous, there’s no doubt.”

Olsen said the city uses about 6,000 tons of salt in a typical winter.

Besides the high cost of salt, municipalities are having trouble getting salt when they need it, Olsen said. “Last year we had the money in the budget to purchase material, but we couldn’t get it,” Olsen said. “That’s as much, if not more, of a disturbing dilemma.”

Carol Breen, spokesperson for the state Department of Transportation, said the state isn’t having a problem with salt supply yet. The state contract, negotiated by the state Office of General Services, stipulates that suppliers have to have 150 percent of what the state estimates it will need, which is 1 million tons.

“When shortages come up, it isn’t because there isn’t enough salt. It’s usually because we got a lot of snow in a short time and we’ve used up all the salt in our small storage shed and can’t truck it across the state fast enough,” Breen said.

Salt prices in Saratoga County have increased by 40 percent this year from $41.65 per ton to $58.29 per ton, according to Joe Ritchey, county commissioner of public works, the greatest increase he said he has seen in recent years.

The county’s budget for salt hit $1 million for the 2009 budget, which begins Jan. 1, up from $675,000 in 2008, Ritchey said.

The county takes care of 360 miles of roads, including those around the Great Sacandaga Lake. Ritchey said the only thing he could do to save money would be to reduce the use of salt, a delicate balance of safety and cost.

Schoharie County officials preordered between 2,000 and 3,000 tons of road salt when they learned that prices were going to skyrocket. Road salt will cost $52.26 per ton, up from $40.20 last year. The county gets its salt from Cargil.

Schoharie County maintains 321 miles of county roads and contracts for 150 lane miles of state roads. Thomas Fagnani, county commission of public works, said the county uses about 14,000 tons of salt per year.

Brad Maione, spokesman for the state Office of General Services, said he isn’t sure if there will be a shortage of salt this year, but the assumption that there might be is what is driving prices up, along with increasing transportation and energy costs and storage fees.

While energy prices have fallen dramatically, salt contracts were negotiated during the summer to take effect Sept. 1, when energy prices were at an all-time high.

In Schenectady County, salt prices have increased by 50 percent from $35.79 per ton to $55.27 per ton.

In Albany County, prices have increased from $48.92 per ton to $52.24 per ton.

“This is the nature of doing business,” Maione said. “We don’t have wild fires, hurricanes or droughts, so this is what we get living in upstate New York.”

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