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AUSTINTOWN -- Township roads may be more treacherous to navigate this winter.
Township Administrator Mark D'Apolito said Austintown and surrounding communities will only receive about one-third of their road salt orders from the Ohio Department of Transportation, which amounts to 790 tons compared to the township's regular order of about 2,500 tons.
Morton Salt, which is one of two major providers of road salt along with Cargill, discovered a significant influx of water at its Fairport Harbor mine beneath Lake Erie on Oct. 22 and immediately evacuated workers. The company announced the suspension of mining operations Oct. 26 and laid off 77 employees. The water infiltration is still being investigated, with no known reopening date.
The closure of the mine leaves Mahoning, Portage, Trumbull, Geauga and Lake counties - which all contract with ODOT for reduced bulk-purchase salt rates from the two companies - left to share only the salt that was on the dock at the time of the closure.
"That means that at this late hour in October, November here, we’re left with very few choices for road salt because if you are shipping it by the lake or by the river, that’s probably already been set in motion in most cases," D'Apolito said.
D'Apolito said the township is exploring all available options.
"I am in the process of researching other vendors to cover, as I’m sure our other local partners are as well," he said. "We just don’t have high hopes that we’ll be able to fully supplement our order. I also don’t have any expectation that the pricing will be near the bid amount that we received through ODOT given this market disruption.
The township agreement with ODOT was for $63.84 a ton.
D'Apolito noted that officials cannot help but speculate about the reason for the mine closure.
"I would have to point out here too, it’s only been about 10 years since the Ohio attorney general settled with Morton and Cargill regarding a price-fixing scheme that was said to have gone on several years prior," he said. "Hopefully that’s not what is at play here, but we will be carefully scrutinizing the path forward and looking to procure the additional salt at the best possible rates, and maybe asking the trustees to declare emergencies in time to waive bidding."
D'Apolito said the weather forecast already calls for ice Friday evening.
"Our road department’s gonna be looking at salting probably intersections and hills, so please understand that this is not us cutting costs. This is us working with the available resources," he said.
D'Apolito said that while larger communities and state agencies like ODOT will be supplementing with salinated brine, Austintown does not have that option.
"The township is not set up to handle brine," he said. "We don’t have any trucks to deploy brine. We are all salt-based, nor do we have storage facilities for brine, so it’s a timing issue. If this would have happened earlier in the summer, we would have been able to work things out with other vendors and arrange for transportation, but we’re on it, we’re aware of it, we’re aware of the companies involved and their history, and we’ll stay vigilant, but please be careful on the roads this winter because I expect that it will probably affect any roads you’re traveling on, not just township roads."