GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – ‘Tis the season for icy roads and driving slow. But Green Bay’s public works department has been prepared, applying brine and salt to roads around town for the past few weeks.
Public Works Director Steve Grenier says they preemptively salt and brine the streets when snow is expected. The department is still working with numbers budgeted in 2019 but Grenier thinks the current supply should be fine unless something extreme hits the area.
“We’re looking pretty good right now, obviously that’s dependent on what Mother Nature throws at us here for the next two months,” Grenier says.
Now, as winter weather returns, most people understand the basics of plows removing snow and salt melting ice. But brine is a not-so-secret ingredient that helps the city effectively clear the roads.
Grenier says “that will help stop any precipitation that falls from bonding to the pavement that’s underneath it, and that’s what you really want to do. If it’s not stuck to the pavement, you can still plow it off. Once it sticks, we run into issues of being able to break that bond.”
Brine applications work best for the first half-inch of snow. However, Public Works is able to adjust brine mixtures to adapt to different weather conditions.
“We’ve had a brine-making machine and brine-capable trucks for several years now. As a matter of fact, we’ve been out at least twice already this year.”
Those instances were even before the snow fell Tuesday night.
Brine is also often used to make salt applications more effective. Grenier says there are brine tanks mounted on plow trucks, which are used to pre-wet salt before spreading it on the road.
“Salt has to be wet to activate and do anything. Simply dropping rock salt doesn’t do anything for snow or ice management. But once that gets a small coat of water on it, then it becomes activated and doing its thing,” Grenier says, “brine activates the salt immediately, making the salt we use more effective so we can cut back on the amount we put down. Studies have shown that we’re about 30% more efficient with the salt we’re putting down because it’s not bouncing up over the curb and ending up in peoples front yards.”
