AUSTINTOWN — As the winter weather spell continues, the Austintown Road Department is doing its best to keep up, and township officials already are making plans for improvements for next year.

Trustees recently approved the purchase of two new trucks for snow and ice control and are seeking funding from the state to help offset the cost.

Township Administrator Mark D’Apolito said he is waiting for a few more details before he submits an application for an H2Ohio River Initiative Chloride Reduction Grant. D’Apolito said the new trucks may cost up to $370,000, and the grant would cover as much as $75,000 of that.

He said most of the cost would come from the Road Department budget, but the township’s general fund may have to chip in money. The success of the grant will determine how much money comes from the general fund, D’Apolito said.

He said trustees are well aware of the state of the fleet of trucks used to plow and salt the township’s 117 miles of roads.

“It’s an aging fleet, and we have several trucks that are in later stages of life, from the early 1990s and late 1980s, and we’re past the end-of-life stage on at least our four oldest trucks,” he said.

Austintown has 12 2.5-ton and 3-ton trucks, D’Apolito said, and only four of them have articulating plow blades that can move from side to side. The rest all have fixed blades that can only move up and down.

“They were meant to plow in one direction on a highway, but they were not meant for the cul-de-sacs and neighborhood roads that we have, at least not by today’s standards,” D’Apolito said.

The township also has three smaller 2500 to 3500 series pickup trucks that do small roads and clean up what the big trucks cannot.

D’Apolito said the new trucks both will have articulating blades and state-of-the-art controls for salt distribution.

“Which is where the grant comes in,” he said.

H2Ohio is a collaboration between the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

The H2Ohio website says the grant “will award a total of approximately $1 million in funding to local municipalities for equipment upgrades that will prevent the over application of salt on Ohio roads and reduce the amount of salt running off into Ohio’s streams, rivers, and lakes.”

D’Apolito said some of the township’s trucks have a control to let them increase or decrease salt distribution, but they are “not very accurate.”

“The effect is that you end up putting more salt in some places than others, and so the new trucks will allow us to regulate that and dial our salt up and down.”

D’Apolito said the township uses only salt and not brine, such as what the Ohio Department of Transportation uses on main highways like Mahoning Avenue and state Route 46.

He said even if the township wanted to start using brine, it would have to completely overhaul its fleet and facilities to allow for storage and distribution of the saline liquid.

“Our missions are different,” D’Apolito said of how Austintown and ODOT manage snow and ice control. He said that while the state’s first concern is road safety, keeping main thoroughfares open is also largely about ensuring commerce across the county and state, including shipments of salt to communities like Austintown.

“We have to make sure school buses can pick kids up and ambulances and fire trucks can get where they’re going and nurses can get to work,” he said. “We buy equipment to keep neighborhoods serviceable.”

D’Apolito said the grant application is due by Jan. 31, and he expects new trucks to be in service for next winter.