Salt vs Sand

[bigscience]

With our recent winter blast our neighborhoods are caked with the gravel/sand that DOT puts down. It made me wonder why they put down sand some times and deicer/salt other times. I thought I remember a news story about how salt is actually better because it doesn't add silt to the streams, salmon and all. Can anyone confirm? Personally I like the sand because it seems to last longer.

[bisjoe]

Sand helps with traction, while salt actually melts the ice. Seattle decided to start using salt after their fiasco a few years ago. Here they use both sand and liquid de-icer, the latter is done before the snow comes to help keep it from sticking longer.

[nucmed24]

I live in a small town on the coast where we are lucky if we get any salt or sand!!

[blucher]

A year ago Portland had a week of closed roads from ice & snow. They won't use salt but prefer a deicer that only works within a few degrees of 32 degrees. It proved useless.
I appreciate an attempt to employ green solutions but this makes no sense. In Portland the very polluted Willamette joins the Columbia.
Using salt on the few occasions it's necessary (not even once a year) and the greener deicer when possible wouldn't harm the fishery.

[1Brotherbill]

After living in Washington for about six years and then moving to Minnesota in 1996. I never understood why they never salted the roads in Washington. The sand makes the roads dangerous when the ice is gone.

As far as the green way. In Minnesota they use salt and it doesn't effect the environment as much as you would think. It's not like the problem in the Northwest is unique. Other states deal with the problem more often. To solve the ice problem on the roads in the Northwest just look at other areas of the country and find out what they are doing to solve the problem.

[rpappi]

Salt gets washed away very quickly here and sand stays on the roads longer. Snow stays around out there longer than here. We melt pretty quick and freeze over night sand creates texture salt gets washed away.
It damages vehicles and it's more difficult to store. We also use a de-icing spray.
Different parts of the country different ways to handle the problem.

[oregonparamedic]

I wouldn't mind the use of salt and I'm sure the car washes would love the extra business.

[Bender]

You should pray to the gods of unrusted vehicles that salt never becomes a major use item. Talk to anyone from the east coast especially the north east about their vehicles. Car wash or not, unless you put it on a rack and power-wash the underneath, everything WILL rust. I grew up in MD and dealt w rusty rigs constantly. trying to find any used vehicle undamaged is impossible. Last year in NY I saw 2007-10 rigs that were rotted out.

The other thing about salt is it makes a brine solution that has a lower freezing point, until it gets diluted. So with all the hills on the west side, the solution runs away and is diluted by uphill runoff. That leaves a thin layer to freeze.

Salt = booooo.

[Cap'n Crunch Killa]

I don't want them to use salt for the reasons in the post above. Seattle didn't use salt in 08 because it would get in the .....salt water of Elliot Bay.