Today's Seattle Times: "Seattle refuses to use salt; roads "snow packed" by design"
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.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 23, 2008 09:17 AM | Email ThisSeattle 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.
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.
But the dem's really care. Yeah sure they do.
Posted by: Medic/Vet on December 23, 2008 09:11 AMSpeaking of which, have any readers been in downtown this morning? Trying to figure out if it makes sense to try and trudge in to see the Nutcracker - and of course the phone lines are jammed up to PNB right now.
Anyone been driving down there and have more up-to-date info than in the Times/NWCN? The Times was saying chains and/or four wheel drive for city streets - and even then it was a mess... this seem accurate?
Posted by: Anthony on December 23, 2008 09:18 AMI wonder if any smart lawyers are out there. If you lose a family member because of this. I wonder how much cash you could get out of the city???
Hmmm Hey Pope, nows your chance!
(-:
By the way Duff, if your 'really' in PR. Why in the heck are you on this blog?
Posted by: Medic/Vet on December 23, 2008 09:23 AMNo longer in PR my man...back in the good 'ol USA gain, but still not homw.. when I travel I can & do mirror my desktop...so why not tune in to this interesting blog...
Posted by: Duffman on December 23, 2008 09:30 AMHow useful is SPD against crime even on a hot sunny day? Don't they spend most of their time raiding strip clubs anyway? If I lived in Seattle I'd have a gun and 4WD vehicle to get around, and would not be concerned if the police could not respond.
Posted by: russell garrard on December 23, 2008 09:41 AMAs for the creeks that carry fish, I think you are going to have more problems when the stuff melts and clogs the storm sewers (yes, that includes the creeks unless you isolate them, but if you do, they don't get water) than a little salt on the roads.
Next week we will be talking and people will be moaning about their properties being flooded.
Posted by: swatter on December 23, 2008 09:45 AMthis little snow dump will give you a good window on how our great city & leaders will react in a real terror crisis--paralyzed with no proper equipment or plans; chasing tails & crying to Uncle Sam; mien got; WTO-Snow
Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on December 23, 2008 10:02 AMThey make driving as difficult as possible year round, through high parking fees, lack of parking spaces, poorly timed lights. The goal is to get people out of their cars and onto mass transit.
So, now everyone wants mass transit, and what happens? Buses that get stuck because the streets aren't plowed and trains that can't run because the switches are frozen. No one can get where they want, even using the blessed method.
What is worse, no one can get to the stores, which means sales tax receipts will be lower than expected, and Seattle won't have money to fund 911 or police. But the essential service of the Mayor's driver will be funded, as well as the big SUV that he insists on being driven in.
Posted by: Janet s on December 23, 2008 10:02 AMCredit ST for mocking the Mayor and Council, but they could have rubbed their noses in the ca ca too.
Posted by: Paddy on December 23, 2008 10:04 AMWe are not Cleveland or Chicago! Any possible damage from a rare use of salt is negligible... and isn't Puget Sound SALT WATER??!
Let one kid die or one family wiped out or one bus overturn because the morons in Seattle refuse to properly clean treacherous streets in a way that is within their capability... the loud lawsuit will change that ridiculous attitude quickly.
Why do the Seattle city leaders hate humans?
I wonder, what do they use on the runways at our airports? Somehow I sincerely doubt it's large rubber spatula's to create hard pack.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on December 23, 2008 10:23 AMEquipment: Seattle has 27 snowplows, Portland (OR, not ME) has 55!!
Nickels' campaign song for 2009 should be "If I only had a brain". Of course, Seattle voters could use it, too.
Posted by: sro on December 23, 2008 10:37 AMI wonder how many SUV bashers have been catching rides this week with their selfish, elitist, AWD-Escalade driving neighbors?
Posted by: BrassTax on December 23, 2008 10:43 AMSimply because this brain dead moron is even stupider than Nickles; I never dreamed that a higher level of stupidity than Nickles has cornered was acheivable.
Salt harmful to Puget Sound?? He must be a graduate of Seattle Public Schools and Evergreen College..
Hell, run him for Governor........
Seattle: the Mad Hatter's Tea Party...
Posted by: Hank on December 23, 2008 10:51 AMYou can easily rinse the salt off the bottom of your vehicle as most people do when they launch their boats in salt water (Puget Sound).
Posted by: ajday on December 23, 2008 11:03 AMThere is one reason the northwest is an old car Mecca and that is because they do not use road salt. Relatives from the salt area come here to find aged beauties to take home as show cars.
A bit of driving ease today, is not worth the tens of thousands of new car expense when the old car rusts out instead of wearing out.
Forty-four years of living here and not one rusted out car, while in Ohio where I came from, they have purchased four or five cars to replace their junk.
Posted by: Sam on December 23, 2008 11:15 AMThere is one reason the northwest is an old car Mecca and that is because they do not use road salt. Relatives from the salt area come here to find aged beauties to take home as show cars.
A bit of driving ease today, is not worth the tens of thousands of new car expense when the old car rusts out instead of wearing out.
Forty-four years of living here and not one rusted out car, while in Ohio where I came from, they have purchased four or five cars to replace their junk.
Posted by: Sam on December 23, 2008 11:15 AMThere is one reason the northwest is an old car Mecca and that is because they do not use road salt. Relatives from the salt area come here to find aged beauties to take home as show cars.
A bit of driving ease today, is not worth the tens of thousands of new car expense when the old car rusts out instead of wearing out.
Forty-four years of living here and not one rusted out car, while in Ohio where I came from, they have purchased four or five cars to replace their junk.
Posted by: Sam on December 23, 2008 11:16 AMThere is one reason the northwest is an old car Mecca and that is because they do not use road salt. Relatives from the salt area come here to find aged beauties to take home as show cars.
A bit of driving ease today, is not worth the tens of thousands of new car expense when the old car rusts out instead of wearing out.
Forty-four years of living here and not one rusted out car, while in Ohio where I came from, they have purchased four or five cars to replace their junk.
Posted by: Sam on December 23, 2008 11:17 AMPS.. No the cars won't rust out because we don't get large amounts of snow every year. If you've lived long enough, you would know that.
Posted by: Medic/Vet on December 23, 2008 11:21 AMHey lib trolls, hit the POST button once and count to 100. Magic will happen.
Posted by: pbj on December 23, 2008 11:30 AMIf your car is not equipped to handle the snow STAY HOME!
I would rather have a couple of days off than rot my car.
Posted by: Vince on December 23, 2008 11:47 AM
First there is the obvious headline- record snowfall ---- it's because the planet in peril is warming.
Next- there was the lib retards standing out in the freezing cold waiting for their "government provided transportation choices" and ending up stranded because the government decides it isn't going to operate in cold weather.
Then there was this article- the government INTENTIONALLY crippled transportation.
This is truly the special olympics of government.
Though the Godless believers in government aren't working, Darwin surely is.
It's a great day to be a self reliant conservative!!!!!!!!
My-god, the fools just came out in mass. Just how many times a year go we get this type of snow???
Jezzzzzzzzzzzz your stupid!
PS. Do us all a favor, stay home. If you post like this, I'm pretty sure you can't drive either.
Posted by: Medic/Vet on December 23, 2008 12:06 PMI've lived in the rust belt, don't want to go back. I do just fine in the snow and have pulled several morons out of the ditches this last week.
We rarely get snow. We don't need to load up the salt and spend millions on new hardware for the 2 days a year it snows. This storm is a 10 year event. Just take your midol and call it good.
Posted by: Vince on December 23, 2008 12:10 PM...and who pays you when you're off Vince? Most people, who don't have saved up vacation/personal days by this time in the year, can't afford to miss a couple days of work just because their city is too damned STUPID to use road salt to make sure the roads are SAFE. Does anyone have ANY idea how MUCH salt it would take to raise the salinity of Puget Sound AT ALL???? It would have to be a MASSIVE amount!
Posted by: Sam on December 23, 2008 12:57 PMit would take 8000lbs of salt (4 tons) per MILLION gallons of water to raise the salinity by 1/10th of one percent. Now...this would be assuming that the body of water in question was closed off, and did not exchange any portion of its volume with new water, as the Sound does. therefore , Seattle gov'ts arguement that it would pollute the Sound, is BULLSHIT.
Posted by: Sam on December 23, 2008 01:08 PMSeattle's ice treatment is crushed limestone (calcium carbonate) slurried with vinegar (dilute acetic acid).
The reaction product is CO2!!!! and calcium acetate. Calcium acetate, the de-icer is probably not harmful, but where is Richard Conlin's alarm over these possibly hazardous man made materials??
Wouldn't goat urine be a better de-icer ??? Think of it... Streets of Gold!
Has anyone calculated the ice melt efficiency of sodium chloride versus calcium acetate?
I doubt anyone has, but I'll bet salt is cheaper and much better.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on December 23, 2008 01:42 PMYou complain that you can't afford to take a day off. As a conservative I would think you were smart enough to have a bit of savings and maintain proper stores in your home. Try not spending more than you earn. In other words don't act like the Government you despise.
What are you people going to do when a real disaster hits? Do you really want to rely on people like Ron Simms or Greg Nickels to bail you out?
As for braking on ice. You just keep doing that, tow trucks and body shops need work too.
Posted by: Vince on December 23, 2008 02:35 PMWe don't use salt in the area because it rots out our cars.
That simple. Case closed.
Posted by: Don Ward on December 23, 2008 02:37 PMAs for the patient he was trying to get to - tough luck buddy. The city government has decided that a human life is not worth the risk of raising the salinity of Puget Sound by 0.0000001% and harming a fish.
So be it. The mayor and city council will all be reelected anyway.
Vince thinks we should just all stay home until it all melts. That is the view of a child. Adults know there may be fellow citizens who run out of insulin, or need thrice weekly renal dialysis, or run out of milk for the baby, or have sudden chest pain, or have a frozen pipe burst in their wall, or have a house fire, or have their house burglarized, etc.
We need not suspend civilization because of 10 inches of snow. A few tons of salt and a few dozen snow plows will prevent us from reverting to cave men. Perhaps the city council could just pass a resolution declaring Seattle a snow free zone, and be done with it.
Posted by: Steve on December 23, 2008 02:47 PMPass the salt, please.
Posted by: FarFarRight on December 23, 2008 03:53 PMI certainly have to agree with you guys and girls on this one. I live on the hill close to 31st + Mass and I drove my rear wheel drive truck w/out chains to work btw, but I have tons of experience driving in the white stuff.
For a town like Seattle that gets a dusting once in a blue moon, not use salt to clear roads and let its largely inexperienced snow drivers (including the metro bus driver that was stuck in his private car in uniform in front of my place) drive at their peril, is insanity and borderline criminal.
I'm voting with you guys next local elections.
Maybe you didn't read the article in the Times.
The City's official statement is that it doesn't use salt because it will harm Puget Sound. There is no mention of rusting car bodies.
I'm from Detroit. That's where 50% of road salt comes from. Huge mines right underneath the city. Salt is virtually free there and the winters are long. Old hoopdies get cancer in the wheel wells. Modern cars have much better corrosion protection and undercoating.
In Seattle, car rust is NOT an issue.
Where can I find access to your history of Salt Policy in Seattle. It's new to me.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on December 23, 2008 04:34 PMTo be specific, Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic found himself out on his ear after bungling the cleanup after a 1979 snowstorm, which his opponents turned into a splendid blame festival. Who's to say it couldn't happen here? Just the photo of those two busses dangling over the freeway is a priceless campaign poster.
"Seattle - the City that Doesn't Work! Vote the Rascals Out!"
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on December 23, 2008 05:15 PMthe result of 20 years of leftist brainwashing is such that no amount of incompetence will be punished against Democrats.
Horse puckey. You're still blogging, aren't you? So am I. After a couple of years of Chicago politics from Washington, the electorate, with the help of the collapse of the MSM and some refreshing independent information online, will recoil with horror from the overfed urban Democratic politics. Help hasten the day.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on December 23, 2008 05:46 PMThen FTFA we have this gem of enlightened thinking
"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."
Like many have pointed out THE PUGET SOUND IS SALT WATER
Like Sam above stated so well "it would take 8000lbs of salt (4 tons) per MILLION gallons of water to raise the salinity by 1/10th of one percent. Now...this would be assuming that the body of water in question was closed off, and did not exchange any portion of its volume with new water, as the Sound does. therefore , Seattle gov'ts arguement that it would pollute the Sound, is BULLSHIT.
Posted by: Sam on December 23, 2008 01:08 PM"
You should have added that the Puget sound is ~43.6 trillion gallons of sea water
(43,600,000,000,000/1,000,000)8000=348,800,000,000 or how many pounds of salt it would take to raise the salinity 1/10th of one percent in the entire sound. Again this assumes closed system etc. and the sound is not in fact....
[The Puget Sound] Has a maximum of 14 feet difference between high tide and low tide and exchanges about 2,131 billion gallons of water each tidal cycle, compared to the average daily water use of Puget Sound Basin residents of approximately 475 million gallons...
Oceanographers report salinity (total salt content) and the concentrations of individual chemical constituents in sea water -- chloride, sodium, or magnesium for example -- in parts per thousand, for which the symbol o/oo is used. That is, a salinity of 35 o/oo means 35 pounds of salt per 1,000 pounds of sea water. Similarly, a sodium concentration of 10 o/oo means 10 pounds of sodium per 1,000 pounds of water.
The Baltic Sea ranges in salinity from about 5 to 15 o/oo. The salinity of the Black Sea is less than 20 o/oo. Water of the Puget Sound in the Tacoma, Wash., area ranges in salt content from 21 to about 27 o/oo. This area is drained by a number of fresh-water streams which discharge an average of about 4.1 billion gallons of water per day into Puget Sound.
It is not about the environment, or safety, or anything scientific, it is about FEELING good about something, when in fact you should feel like shit. Serve the public instead of trying to be Captain Planet.
Fire the City Council and the Mayor then plow the streets with real plows and salt the crap out of it for the 2 days we have snow in the lower elevations. The sound will be fine.
Posted by: Variable on December 23, 2008 05:53 PMBTW, my opinion on this might be slightly influenced by the fact that I was almost killed today by an idiot in a yellow VW Beetle who decided to pass another car on an icy downhill slope, and almost ran me down. Her stupidity would not have been a life-threatening emergency (for me), if the roads had not been a sheet of solid ice.
Posted by: HT on December 23, 2008 06:47 PM"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."
your not sensitive...your stupid.
Posted by: Jimmy on December 23, 2008 06:51 PMIn fact, as most other feel-good green cities have discovered ... using sand is WORSE than salt. It clogs the storm drains, chokes the streams, and turns into a dusty air-quality mess when it dries up.
The real reason Seattle uses sand is because they're cheap. It's a fraction of the cost, easier to store, etc. I doubt even they're stupid enough to believe the "save the Salmon" BS ... that's just a line they feed to their useful idiot marxisant voters to get them to nod their head and feel good about the city failing to provide a basic level of service.
I don't expect the city to have it's own salt mine and a fleet of trucks on stand-by. A storm like this is such a rare occurance that it's not a justifiable expense. I expect some interruptions when something like this rolls through town. However .... SDOT should have at least some salt on hand for the main arterials and busy intersections, and at least a dozen more trucks or so. But that's not going to happen because the city budget is going to be spent on art projects and studies for solar panels, instead of providing a basic level of competent city services.
Posted by: Jake on December 23, 2008 07:12 PMWell. They aren't and they don't.
Our last two mayors lost their job because of bad decisions (Mardi Gras riot) and unethical behavior (low-income housing money for Nordstrom's). Unlike many other one-party cities, Seattle does fire the incompetent.
Posted by: David D on December 23, 2008 11:01 PMTHAT knocked me out of my exhaustion stupor!
Thanks. :)
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on December 24, 2008 01:30 AMBut it turned out that her East coast, diversity-challenged ears had misunderstood the Rev's drawl. He in fact had been talking about "a salt ministry," a reference to the scripture where Jesus says "Ye are the salt of the earth." Newsweek later issued a correction.
Posted by: russell garrard on December 24, 2008 03:41 AM"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."
your not sensitive...your stupid.
THIS is namecalling?? The above is a statement of fact.
Wiggins, with his own words, declares himself an idiot, by any definition of the word idiot.
Seattle City government is a product of voters who are more interested in feeling good than dealing with reality and facts.
Pray for snow and earthquakes-maybe, just maybe, mayhem on the streets, collapse of the Viaduct might finally wake up the brain dead and bring Seattle politics out of Disneyland 24/7. Oh, probably not.
Keep those cameras working - the Mayor's next opponent(s) can make inspired use of all those traffic jams, closed streets, kinetic physics problems played out by irresistable forces on wheels, and weeping victims.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on December 24, 2008 07:31 AMChief Wiggum is the head of the Springfield Police department on the Simpsons.
Could this be the same guy? D'oh!!!