Seattle Mayor: Hey, You Know What? Maybe Next Time It Snows We'll Use Salt

Apparently Puget Sound isn't that sensitive to salt after all. Or at least it's not as sensitive as thousands of downtown retailers whose stores were made inaccessible by this absurd policy, nor as sensitive to hundreds of people who crashed their cars driving on the packed snow the roads were deliberately turned into.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced this morning that the city will reverse its decade-old policy and use road salt to melt ice in future storms.

The mayor set certain conditions for using salt: on hills, arterials or snow bus routes, and on routes to hospitals and other emergency facilities when at least 4 inches of snow is predicted, if ice is predicted, or if extreme cold is expected to last more than three days.

The city earlier refused to use salt, saying it's bad for the environment, and instead spread sand over the roads.

"In normal Seattle winters, this practice has served us well," Nickels said in a City Hall news conference today. "This time, liquid de-icers were not enough. People were frustrated, and so was I."

Nickels has faced criticism over the city's reaction to back-to-back snowstorms over the past two weeks. Buses could not run in many parts of the city and roads remained icy and rutted days after snow had fallen.

Thanks to jenjhis.

posted by Ace at 02:15 PM

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