Icy Roads

Icy Roads

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
On a recent interstate trip I was on snowy roads and was reminded about how runoff from freeways treated with chemicals that melt ice and snow can impact agricultural lands… In a bad way. I know Colorado does a good job on their roadways during winter so I called Colorado DOT spokesperson David C. Wieder. “There was a recent article talking about the attempted use of less salt. Washington State University is working on an environmentally friendly way where you can use less salt to reduce snow and ice on roads. I know Colorado as a huge problem with snow, how do you approach road safety in terms of what you apply to the roads? We use, primarily, liquid magnesium chloride in addition to using best practices to minimize the use of that product. The biggest tool that we use is the maintenance profusion support system. It is a computer program that inputs weather information. It comes from all around our state and around our roadways. It combines that with information that we have provided our contractor in terms of the composition of our roadways. From there, there is an algorithm that determines how that road is going to react to that particular weather and that will generate a recommendation for us, when we should start applying product and when to stop applying product.” So Colorado gets it right and it might be a good model for the rest of us.
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