Use of salt brine on Kenai Peninsula roads was reduced by about 60% last winter in response to local concerns about the brine’s corrosive qualities. That’s according to Alaska Department of Transportation officials, who joined Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche for a debrief Monday about how maintenance crews treated roads this season.
The meeting comes roughly eight months after a similar community town hall event, where borough residents voiced their concerns about corrosion and the safety impacts of the department’s brine use policy. Also available to answer questions from attendees was DOT Commissioner Ryan Anderson.
Dustin Padrta was one resident who spoke in opposition to brine use Monday. He also attended the meeting last October.
“When you guys said that there was going to be a dramatic decrease in salt brine use, I feel like there's actually just a dramatic decrease in road maintenance itself, like I saw much less plows out, I saw less than I would say, equivalent standards is what I normally saw, but I don't feel like there was an increase to cover the gap of what was not being done from the salt brine,” he said.
The department uses brine to pretreat roads for snowy and icy conditions. Roughly a quarter of the brine mixture is salt, mixed with an organic compound to reduce how corrosive salt is. As reported by the Peninsula Clarion, the department rolled out salt brine on the peninsula in 2015 as a more efficient and cost effective way to treat roads.
A petition that’s circulated on the peninsula has more than 5,000 signatures and calls on the department to stop using brine altogether. The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly also unanimously passed a resolution calling on the department to stop brine use.
Andy Mills, with DOT, said overall brine use last winter was reduced by more than the 40% reduction goal the department set last fall. He attributed that to the large amount of attention the issue has received from peninsula residents.
“Operators were trying to be as judicious as — they weren't trying to meet the 40 target,” Mills said. “They were trying to say, ‘Can we reduce this down?’ And they felt like there was a lot of — I'm gonna be honest — they felt like there was a lot of scrutiny on them, everyone was watching over their back and watching everything they were doing so they were trying to be very careful. And that was I think, to the benefit of the residents seeing that reduction and knowing that they're being very attentive to the brine issue, which people raised.”
DOT also ran a pilot program through which one high speed road – Funny River Road near Soldotna — wasn’t treated at all with brine. Department officials say they also upped their use of sand on roads last winter and plan to continue using an increased amount in the future.
Micciche said Tuesday it’s too early to know what impacts the brine reduction had on vehicle corrosion, but no negative impacts were observed to road safety. The department will also update its Highway Maintenance and Operation Handbook and enlist a researcher to review existing literature about the corrosive effects of brine.
