Here’s How Burlington Dealt With the Recent GTA-Wide Salt Shortage

Burlington | Halton | Ontario | Latest News |

Published March 5, 2019 at 7:39 pm

You may recall, as it has only been a week, that the City of Burlington – and the entire Halton Region, recently received a generous amount of snow from Mother Nature.

You may recall, as it has only been a week, that the City of Burlington – and the entire Halton Region, recently received a generous amount of snow from Mother Nature.

As a result, on Feb. 27, the Halton District School Board called its fourth snow day this calendar year – the Catholic District School Board also called a snow day, many other events were also cancelled and postponed, and driving conditions were quite dangerous.

In efforts to keep the roads safe for those who did go out, the City of Burlington worked hard to salt and plow.

However, the city, despite having two storage facilities more than any other area in Halton, still ran low on salt. This was a result of a Greater Toronto Area (GTA)-wide salt shortage. 

“The City of Burlington did not run out of road salt; however, the delivery of material from the mine was low over a period of two weeks,” Mary Battaglia, Director of Roads, Parks and Forestry, said in a statement.

In order to maintain safe road conditions during the shortage, the city used sand on secondary roads and sidewalks (sand is pre-wet and contains five per cent salt mixed in – and is sometimes called “pickle mix”), increased its use of brine applications in advance to lessen the amount of snow bonding to the pavement, conserved road salt for primary roads and careful timing of applications.

After more salt was available, the city reached out to a trucking company to secure extra loads to restock its supply.

In order to prevent shortages from occurring in the future, the city is reviewing options such as increasing its storage capacity for road salt.

Do you think the city did enough during the shortage and the most recent snowfall?

Photo is courtesy of the City of Burlington’s Twitter page.

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