Brookfield may solve its road salt storage problems by the end of the year.
Lauren Moore, the village’s public works director, told the Landmark a project to build a new salt dome this year will reduce waste caused by the salt’s exposure to the elements under Brookfield’s current storage setup.
“It clumps. It’s not supposed to get wet. There’s run-off into the storm system, and, obviously, we don’t want a bunch of salt running off into our freshwater areas,” she said Wednesday. “The clumps cause an issue for the augers in our trucks that basically spit the salt out of the trucks. When you get those clumps, you got to pull them out and break them up, and they’re pretty hard. They’re like concrete.”
The salt, which Brookfield uses to clear icy roads in the winter, is stored in two places at Brookfield’s public works building, 4545 Eberly Ave.
“Half of the salt goes in the Quonset hut. The other half goes under the awning and is protected by a tarp, per se, in the winter months,” Moore said.
If everything goes according to plan, “We would like to have the [new] storage up and ready for salt by September,” she said.
According to a memo from the village board’s April 28 meeting, public works’ existing storage areas can hold roughly 700 tons of salt, which is only about half of the amount it orders each year. The new storage hut will be 60 feet by 60 feet, or 3,600 square feet, and hold up to 1,500 tons of salt, Moore said.
She said a joint purchasing agreement with Illinois means Brookfield has to find a way to store salt it might not need throughout the year.
“They basically say, ‘OK, you bought your amount. You have to take it because we can’t store it for you.’ If you don’t take it, you lose it, essentially, so you find a place to put it, anywhere in the building, anywhere on the property,” she said.
Rocco Barbanente, Brookfield’s superintendent of public works, said the village has been splitting its salt between the Quonset hut and awning since last year.
“We had Westchester and LaGrange Park storing some of our salt because we had an abundance of salt, because we haven’t had any winters, but we took that quantity back from both those locations,” he said. “We started to use the other Quonset hut to basically makeshift a new salt area because we just didn’t have the space.”
Moore and Barbanente said one issue contributing to the need for more storage space is that Brookfield rarely needs all the salt it orders due to lighter snowfalls in recent winters.
“It’s a tough call, because if you do get slammed in a winter, then you need it. You don’t want to necessarily say you don’t need it because, if you say that, then you’re paying premium pricing to try and get it after that,” Barbanente said. “You might not get it, and you don’t want to be in that situation where you don’t have the material.”
The village also holds onto excess salt from previous years and uses it when needed, rotating it out of storage to make room for newer salt, they added.
Village trustees on April 28 approved a contract with Valdes Architecture and Engineering, a Lombard-based firm, for $36,100’s worth of design and installation work. According to the board memo, the entire project will cost about $435,000, with $375,000 estimated for construction and roughly $60,000 budgeted for engineering.
“The idea of having the ability to put all our salt in one place and free up space, I think, is kind of a relief for our entire team,” Moore said. “For some of the guys in the back shop, they’re like, ‘Alright, I need to move five things in order to get to one thing,’ so it gives us a little more room to move around, which is probably the nicest thing.”
