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Salt supplies slipping south

JANESVILLE — You know you’re working in Wisconsin when your customers leave the store with lawn fertilizer and Ice Melt at the same time.

It’s getting to be that time of year, said Steve Accola, store manager at Harris Ace Hardware, 200 S. River St., Janesville.

While Accola wishes more customers would take advantage of his fertilizer sale, the fact is they’re “coming out of the woodwork” to buy salt, he said.

And they’re paying a premium for it—15 to 20 percent more than normal, Accola said.

Salt vendors have a hard time keeping up with demands in a normal winter, said John Whitcomb, Janesville city operations director. “Normal” is 30 to 40 inches of snow.

This year, Janesville has gotten more than 70 inches, and snowfall records are being broken all over southern Wisconsin. That’s making Ice Melt and rock salt “darn near impossible to get,” Accola said.

The Ace Hardware warehouse has been rationing Ice Melt, Accola said. He got a shipment Monday, and it was gone Tuesday morning.

“If we could get what we wanted to get, it would be a tremendous amount more,” Accola said.

He’s been encouraging customers to substitute water softener sale for Ice Melt or rock salt. It’s a little more expensive, but it does the trick, Accola said.

Whitcomb’s been salt shopping for the city, too. Janesville has about 600 tons of road salt right now, and the city’s been mixing it with sand.

Whitcomb wants a little more salt to finish the season.

He can’t say right now how much salt the city has spread since November. But in the 2007 calendar year, the city burned through 9,500 tons of salt. The average use in a season is a little more than 3,000 tons, Whitcomb said.

The last eight years, Janesville spread about 160 tons of salt for every inch of snow that fell, he said.

The city paid $45 per ton for salt for a February shipment, Whitcomb said. Now, he’s heard people are paying upwards of $160 per ton.

The city of Beloit is stretching its salt supply by mixing beet juice with its salt brine. The juice lowers the temperature at which the brine effectively melts ice, said public works director David Botts.

The city has been buying a juice/salt mix for seven years, he said.

But this year, Beloit bought a salt brine mixer. The city can now buy straight beet juice and mix the road cocktail itself, Botts said.

The juice saves on salt and money and keeps road salt out of drinking water, Botts said.