This morning, that’s Tuesday January 12th, as I was coming up the driveway from getting the morning’s Norwich Bulletin, the front page lead caught my eye, “Thompson fights ice with sticky mixture”.  Now I know that town officials here in Woodstock were successful in pushing through a $3 million renovation of the town highway garage part of which is building a cavernous salt and sand shed, where salt and sand can be mixed and loaded away from any outside exposure – spending roughly three times what it would have cost to just clean up the salt problem, but one would have hoped that the highway study group and the selectmen might have actually considered something other than how to spend more money during their years long project.  But then why get all confused with new, possibly better, and cheaper alternatives to sand and salt when the real objective was to spend as much money as the town’s people would allow and build a monument to the current administration. 

Prior to last month’s referendum several people had suggested that the town might consider other newer technologies for addressing the sand/salt needs.   Technologies such as the use of brine spray and salt without sand like the state and other cites and towns across the state and nation are doing.  True, this would have required some minor modifications to the vehicles and, oh yes, some water – salty water, but would have required much less storage and eliminated having all that sand to clean up – the part that doesn’t end up in our streams and ponds that is. At the time we were told we don’t have enough water readily available so we can’t consider it!  Well, Thompson’s solution doesn’t appear to need even these modifications – or water, salty or otherwise.  And they use 2/3rds less material at roughly the same cost per ton with no spring cleanup required.  Guess their study group had a different objective – save money and labor.  Oh yeah, they also didn’t have to justify a new ¼ million dollar sweeper – I mean you have to have something to sweep up don’t you?

Here’s the link to the full article: http://www.norwichbulletin.com/carousel/x1409370254/Thompson-fights-ice-with-sticky-mixture

As Connecticut struggles to deal with the current fiscal crisis and the financial maelstrom coming in 2012 which will inevitably lead to cuts in aid to cities and towns, we can only hope we will not be regretting not having been a little more creative in dealing with the highway project.

Dave