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Politics & Government

New Salting Method Will Clear Montville's Roads

A Mixture of Salt And Sugar Benefits Environment Too

The recipe for Ice-B-Gone sounds like a nutritional disaster.

It's high in sodium and high in sugar - often high fructose corn syrup, or, in the case of Montville, molasses.

For the past three winters however, this combination has kept Montville's roads free of ice and made work easier for the plows.

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"The truck drivers love it," said Donald Bourdeau, Montville's Public Works director. "The best application is to get out before the storm and pre-treat."

If the Ice-B-Gone is spread right before a snowfall, it melts the flakes as they hit the pavement, creating a briny liquid that will melt up to an inch of further accumulation. It also prevents the problem of cars compacting the snow into a hard layer that  becomes impervious to the blade of a plow.

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The amount of plowing and the amount of product that the town will need depends on how much snow falls, and how cold it gets.

"There's no magic, one-size-fits-all way to do this," said Bourdeau.

SEACO, based out of Rome, N.Y., sells the product, which it claims can cut salt usage by 40 percent. Other estimates place reduction at 30 percent.

Ice-B-Gone does work better than salt alone, and can melt snow at temperatures below zero. Salt stops working at about 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

Replacing some of the salt with sugar also makes the mixture less corrosive. Because of its reduced impact on ecosystems, the EPA has recognized Ice-B-Gone as a Design for The Environment product.

Montville prefers using the ice-salt mixture to sand on roads near the reservoir because of worries that the sand will clog the gills of fish. Avoiding sand on the roads also cuts the town's street-cleaning costs.

Currently, Montville has approved $130,000 of Ice-B-Gone for this winter, but Bourdeau expects that the town might have to buy more in order to deal with snow in late winter.

In past years, the Public Works Department has gotten busier with snow removal. When it snows, they bring out all 13 plows and hit the road.

"I think we've gotten bigger." Bourdeau said. "The population has grown in Montville and we have the casinos." Previously, he noted, not many people would have been on the roads at 1 in the morning. Now the plows have to be out early to make sure that conditions are safe for traffic.

Along with emphasizing early action on snowstorms and using the new mixture, the Public Works department has taken other steps to utilize its resources efficiently.

"We're getting three-fourths of the trucks outfitted with computerized sanders," said Bourdeau. The new technology should control distribution so that the ideal mixture of salt and sand will go on the road surface, cutting waste.

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