Bring on the ice, snow -- county crews ready

Rebekah Houser/Tribune photo A Bourbon County Public Works truck equipped with a tank filled with a salt-water solution sits near the new salt bin and brine tanks on the BCPW property Monday. From left are the truck loaded with a material spreader, the new 400 ton salt bin, two brine tanks, a salt and water mixer set up, a third brine tank, and the former salt storage building. The building has a capacity of only 100 tons of salt, about a quarter of what is needed every winter season.

With winter weather quickly approaching, the Bourbon County Public Works Department has already begun preparations for a safer winter season.

"We start October 1," said Public Works Director Jim Harris. "We get our trucks ready, we get our spreader boxes on, we get our snow plows on and make sure everything is operational."

With over a decade of experience under his belt, prep time is short and efficient, Harris said.

"By the middle of October we're ready," he said. "Within one week we're prepared with our brine made, spreader box operational, plows operational. It's pretty standard; pretty simple. Just something you gotta do."

To fight the forecast, the 25-man department is equipped with a handful of trucks, plows, spreader boxes, and a saltwater mix made on-site.

"We have five trucks with snowplows and spreader boxes," Harris said. "When we send our trucks out with spreader boxes, they'll put out ICA (Ice Control Aggregate). We mix that with salt and put it in our spreader boxes. We have seven motor graders that we use to remove snow from gravel roads. We have two trucks that we use to put down the brine. It's a combination of water and salt. We make that the second week of October. We have three tanks with approximately 5,000 gallons made up.

"We have approximately 150 miles of asphalt roads so it takes a lot of brine," he said. "If it's dry before, we'll put brine down and ice will not affect it too bad. The good thing about the brine is we can get it down and it saves us a lot of time. It's certainly safer for the public."

The department also uses about four-fifths of a million pounds of salt to combat winter precipitation every year, Harris said.

"If we have an average winter, we'll probably go through 400 tons of salt and about 2,000 tons of ICA," he said. "One hundred-fifty miles of road is a lot of road. Much larger than people realize."

This season, the department has a storage container large enough that the need to resupply mid-winter is no more. This saves the department a lot of money, Harris said.

"The previous storage was 100 tons," he said. Now it's 400 tons. It lets us buy our salt in June, when it's a lot cheaper. It will save enough on the price of salt to pay for the building in three years. That's the savings we're making by buying salt in June. It's the same kind KDOT (the Kansas Department of Transportation) uses.

"We're ready to go. Anytime we have 400 tons of storage, that'll help us get through the winter," Harris said.

With the much-needed salt storage, Harris said the department has most of what it needs to get jobs done.

"We're in pretty good shape as far as equipment is needed," he said. "If we had more trucks, though, it'd help (with time). People don't realize it might take two or three hours to get over an area because of the size."

Depending on the weather, the department's crew will use a variety of methods to help prevent poor road conditions.