FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Road crews across our area have been working overtime to treat and clear roads during this winter storm.
“We've been out, putting down brine, and salt, trying to keep the roads and overpasses open. And we're just fighting it as each wave comes through,” said The Assistant Public Works Director for the City of Fayetteville, Terry Gulley.
Gulley says they have 20 to 25 people working per shift making their way around town treating roads. They started off this past fall with more than 2,000 tons of salt and haven’t used even a quarter of it yet. Gulley says they make their own salt brine.
“We have a stainless-steel salt brine maker, we dump the salt into it, then we run water through that salt, and then that will come out into a tank storage tank and then we will have that at about 26% salt solution,” he said.
Gulley says that lowers the freezing point that the road would freeze.
“If you know we're spraying water out there, it'd be freezing at 32 degrees. If we do it with salt brine, it lowers it down to around 15. It has to get below 15 to refreeze,” he said.
Gulley says last week’s snow was much easier to manage than what we are experiencing this time.
“We could plow from the beginning, it did not stick to the ground. So one pass with the plow was pushing it down the asphalt or this week, we keep getting a little bit of freezing rain and sleet tends to get compacted and kind of becomes more of ice management,” he said.
The Fayetteville road department will continue working 24/7 until conditions improve and they are no longer needed.
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