A New York Assembly Bill regulating salt usage on roads is receiving lots of pushback from North Country highway and road officials.
The bill would impose a 300 pounds per mile limit on road salt usage. It was introduced by William Maganarelli, a Syracuse Democrat who chairs the state Assembly Committee on Transportation.
As the Adirondack Explorer reports, it runs counter to a Senate bill backed by Adirondack advocates. That would set up a state council and advisory board to help expand salt reduction efforts statewide.
Critically, the Senate bill would not impose specific salt usage limits.
“For New York State to require you can’t put more than this amount of salt down, it doesn’t make sense,” said Kevin Hajos, Warren County’s Superintendent of Public Works.
He’s been a statewide leader in reducing salt usage, but said he’s against any legislative effort to limit it. “It’s all dependent upon the storm that you have. So to set some limit, I don’t know that that’s necessarily the thing that we should be doing.”
At a water quality conference at Paul Smith’s College in early February, other local highway superintendents also spoke out against the salt use limit legislation.
They argued it was too prescriptive, could actually lead to a more lax usage of salt, and doesn’t address reducing the frequency of salting.
The legislation also has a sister bill that would require state and local governments to build storage sheds for all uncovered road salt piles in the next decade.