Officials explain cost of salting, plowing, how it will decide dealing with weather events
PETERSBURG — A winter storm dropped several inches of snow around southern New Jersey on Sunday, Dec. 14, when Upper Township took a wait-and-see approach to its response.
Mayor Curtis Corson suggested there were some critics.
“As you know, Facebook seems to be the place everybody goes when something’s wrong. There was a lot of people that judged us on Facebook. In reality, it was not fair,” he said Dec. 15.
Township Administrator Jimmy Van Zlike explained the process the Department of Public Works uses in response to a winter storm.
He opened by explaining that the township does not have the ability to spread brine, a saline solution, on the roadways in advance of a storm, a practice employed on major highways such as the Garden State Parkway.
“It’s expensive and we just generally do not maintain that capability in-house,” Van Zlike said. “What we do have is rock salt that we drop and plows that we drag across the road.”
He said spreading salt ahead of a storm is ineffective because vehicles scatter it into the gutters, where it does no good.
Van Zlike said the process involves applying salt when accumulations are 1 to 3 inches in the early stages of a storm to prevent ice bonding. Plows are used only when accumulations exceed 3 inches.
“Plowing too early scrapes away the salt layer that we just applied. It leads to flash freezing and causes unnecessary wear on the road surfaces and the equipment,” Van Zlike said.
He said waiting allows the plow blades to float, “protecting the asphalt while clearing the lane.”
Van Zlike also provided a cost analysis.
“When we decide to mobilize the fleet, it is a significant financial decision. A single full-scale deployment involves substantial taxpayer resources,” he said.
Van Zlike explained that one application of salt requires 50 tons at a cost of about $3,700 ($75 per ton). He said a full mobilization requires 13 drivers operating for a 10- to 12-hour shift.
“During non-business hours like a Sunday, this labor is paid at time and a half,” he said. “With an average driver salary of about $70,000, a single overtime event costs the township about $7,800 in wages.”
So to apply one layer of salt and one plow run costs the township about $11,000 on a weekend.
Van Zlike said when a storm begins on a Sunday, the township must be “very judicious with the employment of our public works teams.”
“What we do is we watch the weather diligently. When the conditions call, we mobilize the team into action, and that looks like an initial run of salt and then subsequent plowing operations to follow,” Van Zlike said.
He also said it is cost-prohibitive to go too early.
“We don’t want to do it too soon because you’re essentially spending your $12,000 for an event that clears itself anyway. So doing it just right is oftentimes the best call and is consistent with industry standards,” Van Zlike said. “Sometimes the best thing to do, as unfortunate as it sounds, is nothing. In this case this is what we did because the weather of the subsequent days don’t support a full-scale operation.”
He said the roads were clear within hours of the snow hitting the ground and ice bonding never occurred, so the use of salt was not justified.
– By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
