{"id":3111,"date":"2008-12-23T10:49:27","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T15:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=3111"},"modified":"2008-12-23T10:49:27","modified_gmt":"2008-12-23T15:49:27","slug":"seattle-refuses-to-use-salt-roads-snow-packed-by-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2008\/12\/seattle-refuses-to-use-salt-roads-snow-packed-by-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle refuses to use salt, roads snow packed by design"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Seattle Times<\/a> | Susan Kelleher | Dec. 23, 2008<\/p>\n

To hear the city’s spin, Seattle’s road crews are making “great progress” in clearing the ice-caked streets. But it turns out “plowed streets” in Seattle actually means “snow-packed,” as in there’s snow and ice left on major arterials by design.<\/p>\n

“We’re trying to create a hard-packed surface,” said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. “It doesn’t look like anything you’d find in Chicago or New York.” The city’s approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains, Wiggins said. <\/p>\n

The icy streets are the result of Seattle’s refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.<\/p>\n

“If we were using salt, you’d see patches of bare road because salt is very effective,” Wiggins said. “We decided not to utilize salt because it’s not a healthy addition to Puget Sound.”<\/p>\n

By ruling out salt and some of the chemicals routinely used by snowbound cities, Seattle has embraced a less-effective strategy for clearing roads, namely sand sprinkled on top of snowpack along major arterials, and a chemical de-icer that is effective when temperatures are below 32 degrees.<\/p>\n

Seattle also equips its plows with rubber blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn’t scrape off the ice, Wiggins said.<\/p>\n

That leaves many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until nature does to the snow what the sand can’t: melt it.<\/p>\n

The city’s patrol cars are rear-wheel drive. And even with tire chains, officers are avoiding hills and responding on foot, according to a West Precinct officer.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Although the city had plowed 29 of its 36 major routes, “nothing is clear,” Kuck said late Monday afternoon. “This is a difficult and challenging situation that’s going to take us a long time to recover from.”<\/p>\n

Wiggins, of Seattle’s transportation department, said the city’s 27 trucks had plowed and sanded 100 percent of Seattle’s main roads, and were going back for second and third passes.<\/p>\n

“It’s tough going. I won’t argue with you on that,” he said. But here in Seattle, “we’re sensitive about everything we do that impacts the environment.”<\/p>\n

. . . more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Seattle Times | Susan Kelleher | Dec. 23, 2008 To hear the city’s spin, Seattle’s road crews are making “great progress” in clearing the ice-caked streets. But it turns out “plowed streets” in Seattle actually means “snow-packed,” as in there’s snow and ice left on major arterials by design. “We’re trying to create a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftist-lunatic-fringe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}