Marion using a salt and molasses mixture to keep roads clear this winter | The Gazette

MARION — The city of Marion is using a new salt mixture to melt ice off roads and sidewalks this winter. The secret ingredient? Molasses.

The same molasses used in cooking and baking is now mixed in with some of the city’s salt supply and distributed throughout town.

The new blend — called “Magic-0” from Skyline Salt Solutions — includes molasses and some added calcium chloride to make the salt stick to the road surface and activate at colder temperatures.

Mike Barkalow, Marion’s public services and utilities director, said this salt mixture will be more environmentally friendly.

“By using the salt with the molasses in it, it will help the salt stick to the pavement, so there’s less salt being used, rather than it going straight into the streams,” Barkalow said.

In recent decades, road salt has been blamed for higher salt concentrations and increased alkaline levels in rivers and streams.

According to a 2018 study by the U.S. Geological Survey, of the 232 U.S. streams and rivers monitored across the country, 34 percent showed increased sodium levels and 66 percent had increased alkaline.

Barkalow said because the molasses helps the salt stick to the road surface, the city anticipates it will be able to use less salt, which also could benefit rivers and streams.

The salt mixture comes pretreated. Typical dry salt has to make contact with water to activate, Barkalow said. But for the molasses salt, the city creates a brine by adding water, which makes the salt scatter less once it is deployed on the roads.

A typical dry road salt becomes ineffective when the temperature drops below 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

“If our road temperature is really cold, it doesn’t matter how much salt we throw at it, it’s not going to melt,” Barkalow said.

But with the sodium chloride added in, the salt will be effective in much colder temperatures, like minus 15-degree weather, Barkalow said.

Marion isn’t the only city taking advantage of this new molasses mixture.

Michael Duffy, assistant public works director for the City of Cedar Rapids, said the city has been testing the same mixture.

“Cedar Rapids has used a number of different materials based on the type of event, taking into consideration the duration, pavement temperature, air temperature and location of application,” Duffy said in an email to The Gazette on Monday. We utilize this treated salt during extreme cold when the salt is less effective.”

‘Another tool in the toolbox’

Despite the salt being more effective in colder temperatures and sticking to the ground better, Barkalow said the molasses mixture won’t be used every time Marion has a winter weather event.

Barkalow said the best option after snowfall is to remove the snow with snowblowers and plows, so the city will continue to use those methods. But when ice remains on the road surface after snow has been removed, Marion will use the salt mixture.

“We are looking at this just as another tool in our toolbox,” Barkalow said. “We are still learning, too.”

Marion first deployed the new salt mixture after the snowfall earlier this month. For this past weekend’s ice storm that hit much of Eastern Iowa late Friday night and into Saturday, Barkalow said the city put salt on roads prior to the storm to “pretreat” them.

Matt Morris, the operational and street maintenance manager for Marion’s Public Works Department, said the city used about 50 tons of treated salt to de-ice from Saturday’s ice storm.

He said they used the molasses mixture on primary and secondary roads, but used regular salt on residential streets.

In Cedar Rapids, Duffy said the city pretreated the roads with the salt mixture before the ice came because it is “easier to fight the ice buildup.”

The “salt is not applied to melt the ice formed, rather to break the bond between pavement and ice so it can be removed,” Duffy said.

This isn’t the first time Linn County cities have experimented with salt mixtures to de-ice roads better.

The City of Cedar Rapids uses beet juice to help salt stay in place on the roads. It’s estimated the beet juice reduces the salt’s “scattering” effect by 30 percent and could save Cedar Rapids about $25,000 per year in materials.

“The beet juice does not have any specific melting properties but does help the material stay in place longer and at colder temperatures,” Duffy said.

Barkalow said Skyline Salt brought its mixing system to Marion’s public works facility and treated 1,000 tons of salt with the molasses and calcium chloride mix. The measurements of calcium chloride and molasses in the salt is proprietary, and must be done by the company.

The city also still keeps untreated salt on hand for use on city streets.

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Comments: (319) 398-8370; olivia.cohen@thegazette.com