Pittsburgh-area municipalities are frustrated over rock salt delivery delays. The South Hills Area Council of Governments says it’s unhappy with its supplier, Compass Minerals.

“I can say that our experience with Compass Minerals has been very disappointing, and they clearly weren’t prepared for a western Pennsylvania winter,” said Patrick Conners, the executive director for SHACOG.

Compass Minerals is the vendor in charge of mining the rock salt. It’s then sent by barge to West Elizabeth. From there, it’s delivered by truck.

“For the last month or so, dating back to Jan. 14, is when we were first made aware several of our communities have experienced delivery delays for rock salt,” explained Conners.

Conners adds a month later, thousands of tons of rock salt have yet to arrive in local communities. 

“This winter has been a very, very hard one. We’ve seen snowfalls that have come around once every 10 or 15 years, so our communities have been using more rock salt than usual, and the shortages have obviously impacted many of our communities in the way that they can snowplow and salt their roads.”

However, Conners believes there’s hope on the horizon. 

“Just today, we had 3,000 tons arrive, and we’re expecting those to start being delivered to communities beginning tomorrow,” Conners said.

KDKA reached out to Compass Minerals for a comment but didn’t hear back.Â