Environmental Nuttery: Seattle Won’t Salt Roads Because The Salt Is Bad For Puget Sound
Apparently the fact that Puget Sound contains salt water is lost on them.
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 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.
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.
“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.”
If the city is only going to clear its streets enough for front-wheel drive and four-wheel drive vehicles they might want to think about getting their cops come vehicles like that:
Seattle also equips its plows with rubber-edged blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn’t scrape off the ice, Wiggins said.
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.
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.
I wonder if the environmental impact of road salt going into, ahem salt water is off-set by all the people who drive SUV’s to compensate for the crappy winter driving. I mean, I’m no global warming alarmist, but I wonder how the enviro-nuts reconcile that reality?
And for all the money being saved on plowing roads and deploying salt, what about money spent on cops responding to traffic accidents? Often on foot because their own vehicles can’t traverse the streets?
This is the sort of blue-state foolishness that has people moving to red states.
