Hot commodity: Ice-melting road salt costs increase 62% for Rockford

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — It will cost more money to keep city streets clear of ice this year with the price of road salt up 62%.

Road salt will cost the city $86.09 per ton this year, up from $53.26 last year. That’s the price that many municipalities throughout the state pay as they jointly purchase road salt in partnership with the State of Illinois Central Management Services.

The city expects to pay up to $1.86 million this year for 21,600 tons of road salt from Compass Minerals America of Overland, Kansas.

“That is no question a sticker shock,” Alderman Chad Tuneberg said Monday during a meeting of the City Council’s Finance and Personel Committee. “But salt is a commodity, and when we look at anything these days, commodity costs are way up.”

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The cost of road salt fluctuates year to year. In 2020, the cost was $82.76 per ton, according to Mitch Leatherby, the city’s street and transportation superintendent.

“It tends to be volatile, and it does fluctuate,” Leatherby told the Finance Committee.

He said the city does make an effort to reduce the tonnage it uses when possible, and it mixes in beet juice to serve as a natural deicer.

“Sometimes in the deep winter months of January and February it does require quite a bit of salt application on the roadways to get that melting point down,” he said. “It’s one of those things where we do our best to keep the usage down, but unfortunately it’s just the nature of our line of work.”

The city paid higher prices for road salt about seven years ago.Road salt cost $99 per ton in 2015 and $67 per ton in 2016, according to Kyle Saunders, the city’s director of public works.

“Then we had a couple years where we were paying $50 a ton,” Saunders said.

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The city plans to build a supplemental salt facility at City Yards on South Central Avenue that would allow it to store an additional 4,000 to 5,000 tons of salt, Saunders said. That is being constructed with the help of American Rescue Plan funds.

“That way in years where we have a really, really favorable price we can store more of it and try to hedge off some of these peaks,” Saunders said. “That should help give us a little bit of relief in future years.”

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas.