Apparently, unlike the state Department of Transportation, and transportation officials in most major cities, Seattle refuses to apply salt to city’s icy roads, for fear of runoff into Puget Sound… which is, of course, salty. Huh.
Whatever.
No doubt our city’s salt-free road clearing policy is an inconvenience to folks like me without four-wheel drive, but there is a side benefit that every car owner enjoys… our cars last longer out here. A helluva lot longer.
My first car was a 1964 Mercury Comet, which I acquired shortly after moving here in 1992, and it sure wasn’t the oddity it would have been back in Philadelphia or New York, where road salt would have long ago digested its parts into a pile of rust. Folks simply didn’t drive thirty-year-old cars back East, unless they were well cared for classics, but hunks of steel like the Comet were a pretty common sight back in the 1990’s, before the invasion of the Priuses. (Prii?)
So I don’t know how much Seattle DOT’s salt-free diet does to save the Sound, but it certainly saves our cars, thus I and my rust-free, 8-year-old Altima have no complaints.
I’m right there with you Goldy.
In my home state you don’t see any car older than 8 years, and if you do it’s usually rusted out.
Here’s to just taking it slow and easy.
I don’t think the state is holding back on salt to save the Sound, so much as it is to save the watersheds which serve as salmon and other habitat. A little salt in a salmon breeding stream can kill off the whole run, and salt can take a long time to leech there from it’s original location.
But even though the Sound may not be the primary reason, salt could still pose a local problem at the surface water outflow pipes. That stuff, which comes off our street drains, receives virtually no treatment before it hits the Sound. Although the Sound IS salt-water, the degree of salinity varies considerably based upon where in the Sound you are measuring. Areas around inflow sources (rivers and streams), and in the lower reaches of the Sound (Olympia), tend to have lower salinity levels than elsewhere. Increasing salinity levels there can have locally bad affects, destroying clam beds, etc.
@2: Most of the street runoff goes into the Lake – last I checked it wasn’t salt water….but it is salmon habitat, as are the streams.
Interesting. Back in 1970’s I used to restore British sports cars. The last one to buy was one that’d been in Western Washington for a few years – too many rust buckets here, and the rust could be well concealed, but you knew darn well it was there. The most remarkably preserved cars I’d run ever across were in Colorado and Utah.
Steve @ 4
Utah salts the hell out of its roads in the winter. In spite of the environmental problems — Utah is in the middle of the Great Basin, and the salty runoff does not end up in the ocean. On the other hand, most of the road salt tends to come from Utah anyway …
Seattle is always on the cutting edge of lunacy.
Question:
What good is a salt-free car when it slides into a telephone pole and wraps around it?
I’m just askin’.
(I remember a lot of rusted cars when i went to school back east, and I don’t remember a lot of native salmon runs.)
To paraphrase the majority of the hundreds of rants accompanying the story in the Times:
Gosh Darn, a major city like this should have had stockpiled tons of salt and maintain a hundred snow plows in expectation that this once a decade snow storm was going to make me late for work!!! Where I come from this kind of snow doesn’t slow anybody down ever (and we really know how to drive too) Anyone who disagrees with me must be an idiot pinko!
(which for me raises the question – why do the mainstream papers havecomments for their stories? The utter crap that flows over there is what’s really harming our waterways…)
As for the incovenience of snowy roads, yeah, it sucks, but that’s life living with mother nature, we’ll be a lot more inconvenienced if we continue in the hubristic belief that we can beat her with truckloads of chemicals.
By the way, the health of our streams and waterways isn’t just an “environmenalist issue”. The salmon industry is a major part of our economy.
As I mentioned on one of the other posts, a fried of mine deals with classic cars. He likes the ones found around here, because they are LESS rusty than the ones found out east, or sun-damaged like the ones found in California or the Southwest. He said the biggest problem he finds here is mold and mildew breaking down the rubber seal at the windows, and allowing moisture to enter through that path – but that’s only after 20 years or so.
I usually drive my cars for 15 years or so, and I’ve never had a rust problem. My sister, who lives back east where roads are salted, has to replace her cars every eight years or so when they literaly start to fall apart from salt damage.
Plain and simple, you are nuts and so is Seattle. Not using salt is a gimmick for the environmental lobby rather than being responsible as a normal city government should be. This is the same as the idea of not using bon fires at Alki because it is bad for global warming. Nuts Nuts, nuts.
The bus accident could have been prevented and so could have been many other accidents. Let’s not even think about the loss of productiviy, income and other issues.
But Seattle is plain nuts. So is Metro. When they cut busses (cuz they can’t drive), why not use them on the major thuroughfares where there are more passengers…but no…let’s cut busses and on top have more riders stay in the cold. Next time, that rider will either not go anymore (loss of productivity or income) or will take his/her car….rust free though. Yeah.
But if you take the amount of Salt Seattle would have to use and then distribute that over the total area, the melting snow and rain will dilute it so much that you have a much smaller percentage of salt than you have in normal sea water or even the lower sodium contents of Pugent Sound water. Makes no diff whatsover…even if run off into Lake Wash…it’s not much. Yes, some ppm but overall, neglible.
And for the salmon…heck…don’t they come from saltwater ? :-) but there is no salmon run right now, nor are there many (if at all) salmon) in the streams around seattle. So again…this is nuts and a gimmick.
salt? how about a damn shovel and a plow. this is not so difficult, people.
Using salt a few times every ten years will ruin our cars? No it won’t. In Philly they use salt many times every winter. Here, we would only have to use it a couple of times every decade.
Gee whiz. With new show tires I am rolling around with my 2wd picking up employees with bald tires, who can’t get out of their driveway. Go figure. No problems whatsoever.
Buying snow tires. Whoda thunk it….
@9 I know. I was into the classics myself. British, anyway. XK Jags. In fact, my first car was an XK-120. Interiors and rubber are replaced in a restoration, no problem. Rusted out body and chassis – no thanks. I don’t disagree with you as I haven’t been into classic cars in many years. Everything I’ve driven for these many years since has been new and rust-free. But what you say is interesting because we used to be known for our “rustbuckets”. It was far better to find a car from elsewhere. When I moved to Boulder, Colorado I couldn’t believe all the rust-free old cars I came across. Being from around Seattle, that was a rare sight.
#2RHP,
The state uses salt. It’s just the city of Seattle going on its own.
I want to thank myself for my contributions to this blog in 2008.
Goldy spews on another post: ‘I have no four-wheel-drive, no traction control, and no ABS….’
Cheap fucker you are. An eight year old Altima without ABS or traction control. Since most of the regular posters here don’t have real jobs to get to anyway, I’m sure no one really cares about getting around; salted or unsalted.
@6 If you can’t handle the conditions, keep it parked in your driveway, goat brains. Besides, what kind of idiot lives in Montana who can’t drive on snowy roads unless they’re salted? Buy yourself a set of fucking chains, lamb chops.
@7 Ask ’em to pay taxes for snowplows that get used once every winter and you’ll find out why we don’t have snowplows.
#19, Roger
Plows mount to the front of existing trucks. Road graders and loaders can be hired to do the work. The City of Carnation has ZERO snow plows. The snow got cleared.
Hell, I was out clearing a county road today on my tractor and I didn’t charge Ron Sims a dime. I’m sure I was breaking some law.
IIRC, there was a time when CoS and WSDOT salted roads, but people complained about rust damage to their vehicles, so they stopped. They do use chemical de-icers (or ice preventatives, however you want to describe them) on main arteries, but beyond that, you’re on your own.
And the reason why cars are so well preserved in Colorado and Utah is the same reason that I zip about in the snow in Reno: low water content, aka powder. Dry snow + dry climate = excellent environment for car preservation. Before I moved here, I’d spent several winters here with my band for a few weeks at a time, including the worst snowstorms to hit the area in 90 years, where about four feet fell in Reno over the course of a few days. I’ve yet to see anything even close to the Cascade Concrete (which then becomes the Cascade Icesheet) I left behind.
And I have no problem with that.
Wise Seattle!
Salt is VERY bad for pavement (concrete or asphalt)…. not to mention cars.
And too bad for Richard Pope.
Utah doesn’t salt it’s roads and hasn’t in decades. Utah uses a biodegradeable liquid. It’s been that way for at least two decades since they realized the damage salt does to the roads.
Wrong. Using salt a few times per decade doesn’t harm the roads. Please stop lying on this blog.
EWA-Liberal @ 23
Sorry to break it to you. But Utah is an incredible user of road salt. Most of the stuff comes from Utah anyway, and the Utah Department of Transportation bought half this winter’s needs over the summer when the price was cheaper.
Maybe they should have stockpiled a full year’s supply of the stuff, instead of just half that amount …
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Utah Stashes Road Salt before Prices Soar
After last year’s national road-salt shortage caused a major shakeup in snowy Western states, Utah has amassed an impressive stockpile ahead of its neighbors this season.
To hedge against yet another costly shortage, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has horded 100,000 tons of road-salt so far, at least half a winter’s supply. The giant stockpile is the result of an early summer contract that locked in guaranteed low prices from in-state suppliers, according to the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah.
“We got ahead of this crunch,” said UDOT maintenance engineer Richard Clarke on Monday. “Other states are coming to Utah trying to buy salt at any cost.”
Dutch @ 10 is an idiot.
This is the same as the idea of not using bon fires at Alki because it is bad for global warming.
If he actually read the city’s ban it’s because most bon fires used pallets and the burners left nail laying around as a hazard.
When they cut busses (cuz they can’t drive), why not use them on the major thuroughfares where there are more passengers
Again, talk to bus drivers. They can’t get to work. Who is supposed to drive these busses?
And, well, the salmon issue has been addressed already. Too bad people like dutch live by the creed; my beliefs carry more weight than actual facts.
Salt? Fucking Salt?
Let me get this straight, Goldy. You are defending Greg Nickels idiotic position on road salt because of the environmental benefits?
Where do you start on something so moronic? Do you know how many old people I have seen falling while trying to board a bus downtown in the last few days? Why did they fall? Well, because the bus can no longer stop next to the curb because it is literally a pock marked ice rink due to the environmentally friendly position of the City that they should not salt the roads. Downtown Seattle had the most hazardous roads I traveled during this winter wonderland, and I drove in some fucked up shit around this county.
SDOT was a joke. You could tell where the county ended and the City of Seattle began. One had bare and wet roads without too many cars abandoned. The other was the Greg Nickels ice arena. It was like suddenly driving into an ice cavern compared to the roads in the county. Why do sane governments salt the roads? So people do not get hurt. You see, some governments actually believe in public safety.
Jesus H. there were people getting hurt out there, and Goldy’s major concern was the degradation of his shit boxes undercarriage.
Unbelievable!
I guess if public safety is an after thought, then there is a certain logic to keeping Seattle a frozen tundra. If however, you care at all about people, it is one of the stupidest example’s of public policy I have ever witnessed. It ranks with anything the dauphin Bush has ever done in naivete.
Amazingly stupid to put people at risk like that. Amazingly arrogant that Greg Nickels could even think to do it.
Mercer Street all the way to the on-ramp was the worst ice-mess I have ever seen in a so-called civilization. Oddly enough(not!), once a vehicle makes it to Fairview and the on-ramp, it’s bare and wet. Thanks WSDOT!!
The ice on Mercer is broken in random ruts/piles/sheets several inches thick. It took an hour to go from 6th Avenue to the freeway, because it was not safe to go any faster.
Honestly, we had planned to do our Christmas Eve shopping downtown, grab a nice meal and then head home for a relaxing holiday eve. Now, forget all of that. No way can that happen under the conditions in Seattle! No way are we risking harm to ourselves and vehicle. No way are we going to be sitting in traffic as it crawls over broken bricks of ice. Somehow I doubt that we are alone in this decision, and bet that downtown stores suffer greatly directly because of the street conditions.
We are doing our shopping in Bellevue. Yeah, the pretentious glitz of the nouveau riche-wannabe Bellevue would not be the first choice but at least the city of Bellevue has cleared its streets of ice reasonably.
Nickels is an arrogant asshole for making his Green Reputation a higher priority than the relative safety of his constituents and all who work in his city.
Oh, and Mr. Mayor — since everyone is either crawling or idling in place for fucking ever, how much additional pollution do you think is being emitted into the air while you save the environment from salt?
Denver fires its mayors for screwing up snow removal. hmmm… maybe something for us to learn.
22. EWA-Liberal spews:
And telephone polls and rear-end accidents are bad for cars & humans.
You Idiot!
Salting the roads a couple times per year does less eco-damage than the toxic gasses coming outta the top of your empty little Pinheads.
PERSPECTIVE…something the Atheist Progressives lack…or, rather are completely VOID of.
God forbid an earthquake or other disaster ever happened while the streets in Seattle were iced up.
The plural of Prius is Pious.