GRAND CHUTE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The Outagamie County Highway Department is hoping a new road treatment method will make things a little easier for drivers.
The highway department is using less salt, and more of an extremely salty liquid called brine.
Recent snowfall gave road crews a great opportunity to see how effective the brine treatment is compared to road salt, and officials said it’s working much better than they expected.
“If we can put something on the road that’s going to work right away, obviously you’re going to notice it faster, and it should make the roads safer,” said Outagamie County Highway Department patrol superintendent Randy Roloff.
Immediately. That’s how fast the department says brine melts ice on the roads.
Roloff tells FOX 11 the faster roads get cleared means workers can move on to treating more areas in the county.
“Most of the operators would tell you, I believe, that they would like to have the ability to spray liquid brine on their roads.”
Outagamie Highway Department would like to make a full transition from a road salt and brine system to brine only.
But, right now, there aren’t enough trucks capable of spraying the liquid to cover the entire county, so only a certain area is being treated using this method.
Roloff said the section where brine was used, it was so effective that a snow plow wasn’t even needed.
“I noticed that the roads get clearer faster, and they seem to stay cleaner longer. There seems to be less residual on the road, like the white road, it seems to be less on the road than when you have granular and brine.”
More brine means less salt, and Roloff says less salt could save Outagamie county nearly $300,000 a year.
“Which is not only a saving in the amount of salt that we’re buying, but it’s also a saving in the amount salt storage that we need. Long-term, it’s good for everything.”
Officials say about 14,000 tons of granular salt a year is used in Outagamie County but, this year they’ll possibly only need 70 percent or less of that.
The bad news is the department said it could take up to 12 years to switch their fleet over to the brine only system.
