Salt brine to be sprayed on some local roads before Tuesday’s storm

As the first flakes of Tuesday’s storm started to fall in Teller County, state road crews planned to pre-treat highways with salt brine.

Colorado Department of Transportation supervisor Brad Bauer said crews began spraying the liquid at midday on a 40-mile stretch of Interstate 25 between Monument and the Pikes Peak International Raceway.

“We’ll get that layer of salt brine down, let it dry, and then when the snow starts falling, it starts reconstituting on the roads and it tends to keep the roads wet for a longer time,” he said.

Bauer said roads wet with salt brine are less likely to freeze, and crews will follow up that treatment with traditional magnesium chloride when temperatures drop further.
“Salt brine is about 10 percent of the liquid salt we use,” he said. “Magnesium chloride still works well.”

Nationwide, salt brine is being used increasingly as a cheaper supplement to magnesium chloride and other liquid salts.

Crews say they can save money by making salt brine themselves with specialized equipment, that it works nearly as well as other salts and is less harmful to the environment — a common criticism of traditional liquid salts.

Some critics believe salt brine causes vehicles to rust sooner.

El Paso County acquired salt brine equipment last year and plans to begin using it later in the season.

“We’re still in the process of building the brine facility,” said county spokesman Matt Steiner.

Colorado Springs has no plans to use salt brine.

“We currently don’t have the capacity to manufacture it,” said Jack Ladley, the city’s public works operations manager. “But we plan to look at ways to increase out liquid storage capacity.”

Local crews also use a mixture of dry salt and sand to give drivers traction on icy areas.