City finds way to cut winter expenses

WILLIAMSBURG — The City of Williamsburg found a way to save money while treating streets during snow and ice storms.

The street department tested out its own brine mixture and will begin making it instead of buying it from the Iowa Department of Transportation, said Williamsburg City Manager Aaron Sandersfeld.

The method of treating roads during snow and ice storms has changed over the past few years. Cities have moved from granular sand and salt to brine — salt dissolved in water.

“We started using it probably six or seven years ago on a limited basis just to see how the guys liked it,” said Sandersfeld. “We set up a couple of trucks, and they really like it.”

Williamsburg stores its granular salt and sand outside. “It would get snow and rain on it, and when it got really cold, it would freeze,” said Sandersfeld.

The brine is stored in tanks in liquid form. And removing a small amount of ice of snow is instantaneous with brine, Sandersfeld said.

The city bought some storage tanks and skid units and constructed its own sprayers. “You can spray about 2/3 of both lanes,” Sandersfeld said. “We try to spray down the center of the street.

The city bought its brine from the DOT. Of course, the cost is not just for the salt, said Sandersfeld. The DOT has to charge for its time and for water.

“It’s a salt water mix,” said Sandersfeld. “It takes a lot of water to make brine.”

The city was paying 22 or 23 cents a gallon to start, said Sandersfeld. Now it; s paying 27 cents a gallon. “I think they go up about a penny a year, which isn’t bad.”

Then the DOT decided it would use cleaner salt in its brine making.

“They get this rock salt in semi loads,” said Sandersfeld. The semi may have hauled something else, and that will get into the salt. “We find a lot of corn in it.”

They move the salt with an front-end, which also picks up dirt. All the impurities create sludge in the bottom of the brine maker, said Sandersfeld. It has to be cleaned out.

With better salt, the DOT will have less sludge in its brine maker. But it’s twice as expensive as regular rock salt, Sandersfeld said.

Rock salt is about $85 a ton, but cleaner rock salt would be about double, said Sandersfeld. That would make the brine more than 50 cents a gallon.

“That’s not very economical for us,” Sandersfeld said. He wondered if the city could make its own. “I just did the math on it,” said Sandersfeld.

“So we just decided we can do this ourselves. We just mocked it up to try it.”

The city made about 2,500 gallons for about 10 cents a gallon.“ We just built a mini maker,” said Sandersfeld.

Williamsburg used 51,000 gallons this winter — more than usual because of the ice storms, which need more brine as the rain continues to fall.

“We could make about 3,000 gallons a day,” said Sandersfeld, and that’s about what the city uses in a single storm.

At the DOT’s price, 51,300 gallons of brine for one winter weather season costs the city about $13,851. “And to do that … ourselves will drop that cost down to $5,130,” Sandersfeld said.

The price of the rock salt will go up next year, and the DOT’s brine, made with cleaner rock, will be more expensive — about $28,000 — so the savings will be even greater, said Sandersfeld.

“It’ll be a substantial savings next year.”

Of course the city will have the time and labor in manufacturing it, and the city will have to use its own water. “But even [the cost of] 50,000 gallons of water isn’t that drastic,” Sandersfeld said.

The city can store 15,000 gallons of brine, and it can also store 1,750 gallons of beet juice which the city adds to its brine when temperatures get below 25 degrees.

The beet juice lowers the freezing temperature to almost six degrees below zero.

The city will enclose a small section of its street department wash bay to isolate the brine maker. Even the light switch will be placed on the outside of the room.

“The brine is very hard on everything,” said Sandersfeld. “It will rust everything that’s in there.”

Sandersfeld is trying to find ways to save the city money, but ultimately he let the street department decide if they wanted to make brine themselves. “I kind of let the guys decide.”

They started with a small amount to test it. The employees saw that it would work and wanted to continue it.

“We’ll still have some times we’ll need salt and sand,” said Sandersfeld, but most of the time the street crew can keep up with the weather using the salt brine.

Feedback from the public about the brine has been good. It doesn’t leave residue.

“Now you don’t have … piles of sand on the streets,” Sandersfeld said. “That’s the nice thing about brine. It’s already in liquid form.”