The salt crystals crunching under car tires are becoming a somewhat precious commodity as the Lehigh Valley deals with one of its harshest winters in years.<\/p>\n
Municipalities and the state are watching salt supplies shrink in the face of repeated storms that have dumped more than 2 feet of snow so far this season, including the weekend storm that dropped more than a foot of snow in parts of the Lehigh Valley.<\/a><\/p>\n The forecast is teasing a coastal storm for the weekend<\/a>, which is headache-inducing to public works departments. On the bright side, history shows that prediction models can be far off and coastal storms can turn into duds with a modest eastward shift.<\/a><\/p>\n PennDOT spokesperson Sean Brown said the agency before the latest storm had 75,000 tons of salt on hand in District 5, which covers the Lehigh Valley, and had used approximately 46,000 tons of salt this winter as of Friday. The district went through 78,036 tons of salt last winter.<\/p>\n In a statement, an Allentown spokesperson said the city\u2019s supply is running low because of three storms happening in fairly quick succession.<\/p>\n With snow possible even into April in this region, replenishing stock is a priority.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not unique to Allentown, as many municipalities in the region are experiencing similar conditions,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThe City has additional salt on back order and is hopeful to begin receiving deliveries in the immediate future. Crews continue to use available resources strategically to maintain safe, passable roadways.\u201d<\/p>\n Bethlehem\u2019s public works director said he is concerned about the city\u2019s salt levels, which are at around a third of its storage capacity. The city has not been receiving timely deliveries from its provider, which makes it that much more challenging.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will be okay for a little while, but we are pressing hard to resupply just in case,\u201d Michael Alkhal said.<\/p>\n In Upper Macungie Township, \u201cour supply\u2019s a little bit low but we\u2019re conservative on how we\u2019re using it right now and we do have some more orders in, about another 200 tons this week,\u201d township Manager Bob Ibach said.<\/p>\n Emmaus seems to be in good shape at the moment.<\/p>\n \u201cI know we have had an unusually active winter and our salt supplies have taken a beating, but I think we are still okay, provided that our suppliers can continue supplying us as scheduled,\u201d borough Manager Shane Pepe said.<\/p>\n Along with the snow, the cost of treating the roads has been on the rise this year.<\/p>\n Many municipalities buy road salt through the state Department of General Services\u2019 COSTARS program, a cooperative purchasing strategy to get better pricing on commodities from vendors.<\/p>\n That includes 70 municipalities and school districts in the Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n Salt prices differ by county based on contracts between the state and various salt vendors that submit bids to serve individual counties. The DGS statewide average price for road salt via COSTARS is $88.21 per ton this year vs. $84.41 per ton last year.<\/p>\n Lehigh County prices went from $86.74 per ton last year to $90.64 per ton this year, and Northampton County prices went from $81.40 per ton to $85.06 per ton.<\/p>\n Ibach said the township gets a better price from its secondary supplier \u2014 $83.50 a ton \u2014 than from COSTARS.<\/p>\n While noting the higher COSTARS cost, Pepe said Emmaus has always fared better in the program than on the open market.<\/p>\n Staff writer Lindsay Weber contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The salt crystals crunching under car tires are becoming a somewhat precious commodity as the Lehigh Valley deals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,153,3151,433,182,139,434,28,432,2155,1133],"class_list":{"0":"post-99642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-bethlehem","12":"tag-emmaus","13":"tag-lehigh-county","14":"tag-local-news","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-northampton-county","17":"tag-pennsylvania","18":"tag-top-stories-tmc","19":"tag-transportation","20":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}