Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Starke County Highway Department Looks into Brine Application

Posted on February 7, 2018
Author Anita Goodan, WKVI

Starke County Highway Superintendent Rik Ritzler told the county commissioners Monday night that the county is getting closer to being able to apply brine to roads to help clear them of snow and ice.

Ritzler said INDOT uses brine on the roads. He said there was a great amount of brine applied on Friday which turned the road white. He noticed that the roads were “clear and wet almost immediately after the snow stopped falling. The county can’t clear the roads to the caliber of the state’s abilities, but Ritzler said that soon may change.

“We’re making steps to do that,” stated Ritzler. “We used a little bit last year. We have one truck for it, but we really can’t make our own brine. We have in our budget this year to install a brine machine. We’re also going to add a second sprayer truck. Upgrading the fleet is very expensive to do so we’ll just use the two water trucks.”

An experienced INDOT maintenance supervisor will be meeting with highway department personnel next week to show them how to install the brine maker, a process he’s been doing with all of INDOT’s facilities.

“INDOT has allowed him to spend the day with us and really show us what to do and not make any mistakes. I have quotes for three different brine machines and he’ll be able to tell us the positives and negatives about each one so we’re excited about that.”

Ritzler added that some other steps will need to be done in order to offer a brine operation.

“We’ll need to add some storage areas and we’ll have to have a little more salt. We’ll add a truck wash bay. It’s very important to get that salt off the trucks. Also, there’s a lecture at road school this year about Harrison County. They upgraded their facility to include brine. He’ll be making a presentation on the mistakes he made and the good things that were done so we’ll be doing that.”

Ritzler will report back to the commissioners about what he learns at road school in a future meeting.

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