Road gritting cost 8,000 per night
'FRIDGE CONDITIONS' PREVENTED THAWING €
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THE extensive gritting programme under way across the region during the past week cost Fingal County Council around € 8,000 per night, with the local authority using in excess of 100 tonnes of salt.
Prior to its budget meeting last Thursday, Fingal County Council updated councillors on how the local authority was coping with the cold snap and warned that supplies of salt for the roads were running dangerously low.
Director of services at the transport department, Michael Lorigan, told councillors that there was a nationwide lack of salt for gritting the roads and that every local authority in the country was facing the same problem. He said that the county had nine gritting machines that usually worked 60 to 70 nights each winter and that the local authority had a 'highly mechanised system' for dealing with the task. Mr Lorigan said the local authority considered it had enough salt in prior to Christmas and had further orders in running up to the holidays. The principle source for Fingal's salt was imports from Spain and a salt mine in Carrickfergus, he said. He said that stocks from Carrickfergus were all but gone and the council was only getting 'intermittent' supply from the Northern Ireland mine with a truckload arriving 'two or three times a week'. The council had to use salt on the motorways but for some other routes it experimented with mixing 'sharp sand' and salt and early indications were that the mix was proving successful and preserving its salt supplies by using a five to one ration of sand to salt.
Mr Lorigan said: 'The nature of the cold snap meant that there has been no thaw whatsoever during the day.' He added that the continual 'fridge conditions' made the task more difficult than usual with no respite to allow for thawing on footpaths in particular.
He said as of Thursday, there was 200 tonnes of salt in stock in Fingal with no guarantee of how it is going to be replaced and the situation was being kept under review 'on a constant basis'.
The council official said: 'Non-availability of salt is what is killing the effort - we simply don't have the salt.' Mr Lorigan said the situation was 'critical' but emphasised that it was the lack of salt that was getting in the way of solving the problem, not the weather conditions.
He said that lessons had to be learned nationally from the crisis and that it was an 'absolute must' to ensure that all local authorities had access to an adequate supply of salt.
- John MANNING
