South Burlington Reduces Salt Use by 40 Percent

Fifteen years ago, South Burlington highway crews used road salt to melt snow off roads, leaving the highway garage with full trucks each storm and coming back to the garage with empty salt trucks no matter the conditions. Such practices can save a community time plowing and offset staff shortages by having salt make its way through 3 or 4 inches of snow to clear the road. Unfortunately, such practices also mean that more salt than is needed to keep people safe is spread. This causes excess salt to enter the natural environment, corrodes infrastructure, and costs communities money.

When Adam Cate became the highway superintendent, he and his colleagues in the stormwater program in South Burlington realized the harm that local water bodies, vegetation, and soils were facing as a result of road salting. So, he set out to make changes in how winter management operations took place in the community.

Over time, Adam has incorporated the use of new technologies that have allowed his team to cut salt use by about 40%. One of the earliest investments Adam made was to begin tracking salt use during each storm by every truck on the South Burlington snow fighting team. When he started his position, about 500 lbs of salt were spread per lane mile on South Burlington roads. He and his team have reduced that to just under 200 lbs/lane mile – which is equivalent to about 1000 tons of salt used across 272 lane miles – in winter 2024-25, and roads have remained safe. For each storm, Adam sets a goal of 150 lbs/lane mile, and drivers have the ability to use more if needed at intersections, shady areas, on hills, or in other locations where conditions may warrant additional salt use to prevent ice formation. Following each storm, Adam posts the amount of salt used per route in the staff break room. His team takes it from there, heckling one another if one driver seems to have used an excessive amount of salt as compared to others. This friendly competition among staff has helped the team maintain use of lower amounts of salt over the past several years. (How long have you had an average of about 200 lbs/lane mile?)

South Burlington’s success in reducing road salt has resulted from not only tracking use of salt but by incorporating several other sustainable practices as well. This includes calibrating trucks and equipment so that a known amount of salt is being spread on any given setting snow fighters have access to within the truck. Adam has also invested in segmented and secondary plows. Segmented plows have multiple pieces rather than one large plow blade. Each segment moves independently along the road surface during plowing, removing snow more effectively as it passes over uneven surfaces, like potholes, manhole covers, and ruts in the road. Secondary plows are positions immediately behind the segmented plows on South Burlington’s trucks. This adds additional snow clearing capacity on the trucks. Removing as much snow as possible before salting is one of the most basic things anyone managing snow and ice in the winter can do (even individuals managing their own driveway or sidewalk). South Burlington’s use of a combination of segmented and secondary plows is unique in Vermont and is proving to help the community minimize its salt use. Another sustainable practice Adam has incorporated within the South Burlington snow management plan is to pretreat dry rock salt with magnesium chloride either in the pile or at the spinner, which is just before the salt is spread onto the road. This practice of wetting the salt helps to keep the salt in place on the road where it is meant to do its work. Instead, it is activated and immediately can prevent ice formation rather than bouncing off the roadway, negatively impacting nearby vegetation and local waterways.

South Burlington is also a leader in educating not only their own team, but other communities. In partnership with Lake Champlain Sea Grant and UVM Extension, they have led trainings for other communities to understand how to calibrate equipment and created a training video that is available online detailing the process. Plus, they collaborated to develop another video to help local municipal leaders understand the importance of supporting their highway crews to use sustainable practices. Both videos are available on our Salt Savvy Lake Champlain page (see the “for community leaders” and “for municipal winter maintenance/plowing professionals” sections linked at the bottom of the page).