MANSFIELD — It could be a long, slippery winter on Richland County roads.
And county Engineer Adam Gove is not yet sure how it’s going to work.
The one thing Gove is sure of is that as of now, there is has no new road salt coming for the upcoming winter to use on the county’s 347 miles of roadway.
County commissioners opened three envelopes during a bid-opening process Tuesday morning — only to find no companies even offering to supply any salt at today’s inflated prices.
Richland County is also one of a dozen around Ohio that also didn’t receive any salt bids in the statewide bidding process, a group that also includes Ashland and Knox counties. Gove normally purchases salt through both county and state bids.
“That leaves us in quite the predicament,” Gove said. “Currently we have no salt (coming) through the county contract and no salt through the state contract. I am going to have to look at other options.
“I don’t know what those are at this time, but I’ll be working with the state and maybe some other counties to come up with something,” Gove said.
The lack of salt may also impact cities, villages and townships that participate in the county’s contract with the state. The city of Mansfield handles its own road salt contracts and City Council is expected to approve seeking bids when it meets Tuesday night.
In April, the county engineer also received approval from commissioners to again sign up for road salt through the State of Ohio contract. Gove said at the time he anticipated purchasing about 3,000 tons of salt at the state-contract pricing, about 500 tons more than last year.
That amount would be in addition to road salt purchased through the county’s own contract, he said in April. He said the county purchased about 5,200 tons overall for this past winter.
Shortages and rising prices have been an issue in recent years. Published reports blame a myriad of factors, including systemic supply chain disruptions, localized terminal closures, and low carryover inventory resulting from a severe winter.
Even the six counties who successfully received bids on the state’s second attempt are paying high prices.
“Of those six that were picked up in that second bid, they ranged from $135 a ton to $163 a ton. So it is almost three times what it was last year,” Gove said.
“At this time, I don’t have any good answers other than you may want to expect some poor conditions on county roadways here this winter.”
He said he estimates the county has about 1,500 to 2,000 tons on hand, which is “not enough to get us through a full (normal winter) season.
“We pretty much used everything we ordered last year. We had some on hand from the year before, but we probably used 5,500 tons last winter,” he said.
Gove said there are four major road salt company providers.
“But I don’t know exactly where all of their salt comes from,” he said.
Gove said he cannot recall a year in which the county didn’t get a bid through the state contract. He said 2014 was the last year in which the county didn’t receive any local salt bids.
“We had some on hand. We mixed it with grit and that’s the year we invested in making our own brine at the county. We applied brine to our grit salt mixture to help.
“You use a little bit less salt, in those instances. So that’s what we will do this year as well, probably, with having a reduced amount of salt (to work with),” Gove said.
“I don’t know that rebidding is going to be an option. We’ve bid once … the state’s bid twice … and we haven’t received any bids, so I don’t know if rebidding is going to do any good.
“It’s going to be more of seeing what other options and what other possibilities we have for locating and purchasing salt,” the engineer said.
During the past winter, some northeast Ohio communities facing a salt shortage reduced their salting operations, including limited hours.
Is that a possibility in Richland County this winter?
“I’d say there’s no option that’s not on the table right now, whether it be we don’t salt between certain hours or we only salt during certain types of storms,” Gove said.
“I don’t think we’re gonna be able to salt the roads to burn all the snow and ice off. We may have to just keep wheel tracks open. That would be another possibility. But I don’t know that there’s a time of day or a day of the week or anything like that where we wouldn’t salt. More of a storm-by-storm (basis),” he said.
“Everybody doesn’t have a real good answer at this point, and they’re all scrambling to figure out what they’re going to do for the season.”
