Skyrocketing salt prices means messier roads this winter in the Valley

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Winter driving won’t be the same this season because there won’t be as much road-treatment material to spread around.

“The consequences are that drivers need to understand that it’s not going to look like it has in the past as far as clear, wet roads. We just don’t have the resources and funding to do that,” warns Mahoning County Engineer Patrick T. Ginnetti.

Although the Ohio Department of Transportation was able to lower its rock-salt bid price, Mahoning Valley communities are taking different approaches to the coming ice and snow.

Just months ago, salt prices through the state were between $146 and $148 per ton in Mahoning County. That price was recently reduced by ODOT to $105.25. The deadline for accepting ODOT’s price is today.

ODOT’s Steve Faulkner explained that once initial high bids were rejected by early September, “we had to find if there was another option for salt. What ODOT did was we actually went back out to the market.”

The state found Indiana-based Midwest Salt Co., Faulkner said, and bought 171,600 tons at $105.25 a ton. “We’re able to have that shipped in via barge to the ports of Toledo and Ashtabula for those communities that joined with us,” Faulkner said.

Local governments

Austintown decided to buy 3,000 tons at the $105.25 rate, Administrator Mike Dockry said. Last year, the township ordered 3,750 and the rate through ODOT purchasing was about $27 per ton.

“We would prefer to do just salt. We started out just doing salt [last year], but it became apparent before the end of the year that with the frequency of us going out, we would run out,” he explained. This year, some options include “after they plow, they won’t be salting the entire road. They may just be salting the intersections.”

Read how other Mahoning Valley communities are dealing with the problem in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.