Governments at all levels around the country are facing severe budget problems, and that includes the city of Ankeny, IA. Ankeny shares a problem with lots of other cities — a lack of road salt. As our friends at the Salt Institute know, road salt is spread on roads to help melt ice and snow. It can be a big expense for city governments, and a snowy winter last year hit city government budgets hard and created a road salt shortage heading into this winter:
Some towns are paying as much as $170 a ton as salt prices nationwide soar because of shipping problems and surging demand. Hoping for the best – but preparing for the worst – communities are making plans to stretch supplies by mixing salt with sand, brine or even beet juice.
Ankeny, unfortunately, does not have a lot of spare beet juice lying around. But they do have a Tone’s Spices plant. And Tone’s just happened to have 9 tons of excess garlic salt lying around which they graciously donated to the city of Ankeny.
