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Pass the salt

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By The Quad-City Times | Thursday, February 14, 2008 |

Pick a snow belt town — any town — and read the same story.

“City and county road agencies with critically low reserves are cutting back on salting some roads, mixing sand with salt to stretch what’s left,” Matt Helms wrote in the Detroit Free Press.

“Maine has been hit with so many storms that (salt) suppliers don’t have enough trucks to meet the demand,” the Associated Press reported.

“After 11 city-wide snow plowing operations — compared to just three last year and two the year before — the salt supply is running extremely low,” in Green Bay, according to WBAY-TV.

We could fill this page with local news accounts of salt shortages.

Into this context, consider Davenport Public Works Director Dee Bruemmer’s statement to the Quad-City Times: “We’ve had a salt shortage, but now we’re kind of in a crisis mode. It’s going to be very difficult here in the next several days.”

We’d canonize Bruemmer if she’d somehow spared Davenport from the fate of every other Midwest and New England town. But we won’t fault her or any other Q-C public works director. They’re struggling to patch roads crumbling under the snow-freeze-rain-thaw-snow-again cycle. They’re dispatching snow plow crews on nights and weekends, including Super Bowl weekend. Yes, it’s their job and some of those jobs are generating lucrative overtime this snowy season. But those drivers hauling snow on overnight shifts are earning every penny.

By Tuesday afternoon, Bruemmer says Davenport found an alternative salt source. Moline Municipal Service manager Doug House ordered five train cars of salt coming from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. He’s hopeful it will arrive by the end of February.

This bear of a winter is biting everyone. So it’s natural for winter-weary Quad-Citizens to want to bite back.

But hang tough. Anger and blame over a nationwide salt shortage won’t get this community through the next two months of snow season.

Patience and cooperation just might.