Let’s Review the Highway Project Plan and “Methodology”
Update: Glastonbury Goes Green as does East Hartford, Manchester, Bloomfield...the list goes on...
Update 2: Maine DOT material usage stats
This poorly conceived money grab deserves your attention Woodstock citizens.
First, let’s take a look at the minutes of the meetings that have been conducted over the last two years or so- they can be found -HERE-. "Methodology" is not a term that can be used to describe these proceedings.
The immediate concern that jumps off the pages is that despite the $3M cost, nothing whatsoever was discussed regarding emerging technology in highway maintenance. In a little less than an hour I was able to find a plethora of information regarding this subject; as an example:
· Improving Winter Highway Maintenance: Case Studies for CT’s Consideration April, 2006 (link to full report)
The Executive Summary:
The traditional de-icing approach to winter highway maintenance, utilizing sand and salt, has been used in Connecticut for at least 35 years. De-icing is a strategy by which ice and/or compacted snow is removed from the roadway by either a chemical or mechanical means or both. These treatments are typically applied at a later stage of a winter storm and continued past the end of the storm.
Over the last decade, a large number of transportation agencies throughout the United States have turned their attention to improvements in winter highway maintenance operations to accomplish three critical goals: reducing costs, increasing safety and minimizing environmental impacts. In particular, the use of sand as an abrasive in winter highway maintenance is being reduced or eliminated in many jurisdictions. Sand has potentially negative human health impacts, limited traction at higher traffic volumes, and requires significant effort and cost to collect and dispose of in the spring season. Anti-icing is a non-mechanical process by which, a chemical, usually salt brine, is applied to a roadway prior to or very early in a winter storm event. Pre-wetting is the process of mixing the salt or abrasives with a liquid chemical (usually salt brine or water) preceding application on-road. This mixing initiates the liquefaction or dissolving of the salt. Pre-wetting reduces the amount of bouncing and scattering that takes place when the material hits the roadway, thus reducing waste.
Case studies indicate that a coordinated management system based on quality weather data (including local forecasts, and in particular utilizing road weather information systems and forecasts, as opposed to atmospheric forecasts) and centered on a philosophy of anti-icing (including use of liquids such as salt brine and pre-wetting) can result in many positive winter highway maintenance benefits.
The case studies show that a shift in overall philosophy of winter maintenance from de-icing to anti-icing can result in almost complete elimination of sand and some increase in the use of salt. The monetary savings will most likely accrue from a significant reduction in spring clean-up. Safer road conditions were reported. No negative concerns about this transition in philosophy were raised by any individual interviewed for this study. Although salt has some negative environmental consequences associated with its use and is a concern of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the elimination of or significant reduction in the use of sand will have positive environmental and potentially health benefits. Interviewees emphasized the need for a coordinated management system to maximize benefits, including new technology and equipment, increased information and communication systems, and continuous quality improvement.
Despite this information (and plenty more), our highway group mentions nothing regarding anything on this subject. According to the minutes "Green Energy" considerations included radiant floor heating as well as solar and wind to power the new "castle"- yet absolutely nothing on the cost savings of emerging technologies in road maintenance.
·
From the MassHighway website-Why doesn't MassHighway use more sand?
Our experience, and the body of research on the use of sand, indicates the benefits of abrasives (sand) applied to roadways are very minimal. Abrasives are easily displaced from the roadway by traffic and they have no ice melting properties. There are also negative environmental consequences such as air pollution and siltation of waterways. When you consider the cost of the material from purchase, storage, and dispersal; through removal, clean up, and disposal; it is not a cost effective material for snow and ice operations.
Have you seen the pile up at the highway department? Sand has huge environmental impact to the streams, ponds and lakes. The cleanup costs are not insignificant and the percentage of removal of the material is low- it has to go somewhere. Shouldn’t "Green" considerations start there? As you can see in the report, eliminating or drastically reducing sand and simply pre-wetting the salt with brine results in a near 30% reduction in waste and cuts or eliminates sand cost. It is my understanding that we have wells up there that are pumping salt water right now- can it be used for pre-wetting? Was this considered in any way? While I’m no expert, it doesn’t appear to be rocket science, nor were any of these or any of the other issues considered according to the minutes.
The bottom line is this- Shall we spend $3M on a new monument without consideration and a real study of what is trending around the country in emerging technology- or should we do it the "Woodstock way" continuing with 35 year old technology?
Yet another clear choice is being presented to Woodstock voters on December 8th: Back to the drawing board or $3M without consideration of the obvious? The real shame in my opinion is the grant money we have already run through with CME and others without any foresight or a clear mission for the town other than a new monument.
Be sure to pass this along to your neighbors.
More information:
·
North American Salt Company and its "Salt University"·
Michigan DOT-Winter Road Maintenance- Improving Safety While Minimizing Environmental Impacts
· Michigan DOT-
·
Morton Salt-
Make Work……..That is what you do when you ignore the fact that most of the sand you throw on your highways either bounces to the road shoulder or is kicked to the road shoulder by the traffic. The only place the sand remains is in the intersection of roads. The balance of the 100 tons of sand that we throw onto the highways ends up in our wetlands and streams. This not native gravel so if you want test my hypothesis just take a walk to nearest stream that crosses a road and walk to the stream bed and look for yourself.
The Selectmen and everybody in our government has made a big deal about being a "green" town when in fact we are not as green as we could be. Take Glastonbury, which is a town that has 300 lane miles of highway, they use anti-icing in pretreating the highways and do not plow until the snow builds up to 6 inches. We have been fed the story that Woodstock is the second biggest land mass town in Connecticut. Therefore we need lots of trucks. But I guess we forgot one thing…That all maybe true, but guess what? ……..we have no highways. Most of the towns in Connecticut have more lane miles than our 224 lane miles. If you look at cities like Toronto they have 11,000 miles of highways and at max use 120 trucks or in numbers we can understand, each truck is responsible for 91 miles. In Woodstock each truck is responsible for 14 miles. I guess we showed them. By the way, they get 80 inches of snow we get 50 on average.
We have just spent $150,000 on a brand new street sweeper to sweep up the sand that we throw onto the highways. This is truly make work and expense. By the way, the old sweeper is still there. Maybe they will bury it up there like the bus was years ago.
The town neeeds to fix the pollution they caused by historic bad practices.
Did they ever consider moving the site of the garage to an area where a sewer hook-up is available - say somewhere off RT 169 or the industrial park?
The current location should be used to load salt and mix brine and store a loader to do so. They say that this is the fueling station for the buses and creates a traffic hazazd at the present location. What traffic?
Look at the garages in Pomfret and Union - shell buildings with back and front doors, simple ,cheap and effective. Not Woodstock.
Vote NO!
I thought of a really good use for our new sweeper. The new sweeper can be the last vehicle in the Fourth of July Parade so that anything that falls off the 12 fire trucks worth ½ million plus dollars that are leading the parade can be collected by the sweeper. The sweeper can bat clean up...sweet! When you got it flaunt it, that’s the Woodstock way.