CLEVELAND, Ohio — During this stretch of extreme cold, city after city has said it’s dealing with a salt shortage. Cargill tells News 5 it does not have a shortage of salt supplies but says early winter weather led to a surge in demand that its workforce is working overtime to meet.
Salt has been the topic of conversation all week — specifically, the lack of it.
That has left the City of Cleveland frustrated and demanding answers. On Friday, City Council released a statement saying Cargill has not delivered the full amount of salt promised.
“Where has this salt been going, and why is there a delay? Why is there a shortage because as far as our understanding goes, the mayor's administration has told us we've asked for this salt for quite some time, and it hasn't been delivered,” said Councilman Tanmay Shah.
So we went to Cargill to better understand the process and whether there is truly a shortage, given that mining happens beneath Lake Erie. When asked directly, the company responded:
“No, we do not have a salt shortage. What we have is extremely high demand right now,” said PJ King, service operations manager at the Cargill Cleveland mine.
King says compared to the past few years, this winter, Cargill has seen a 30%-40% increase in demand for salt.
“That early winter weather that we experienced in, back in early November and in early December, it just put a strain on the entire network of deicing products,” said King.
He explained it takes about a week to mine the salt underground and prepare it for shipping. With the influx of orders, workers are putting in overtime — extending hours from early morning to late evening and working 70 to 80-hour weeks compared to their regular 40.
“Our operators are working six, seven days a week, 12-hour shifts around the clock to get salt going,” said King.
Deliveries are prioritized based on need.
“It's mainly based on when the orders come in and where they come from,” said King.
For cities that say their shipments have been delayed, we asked if that is happening.
“Maybe in some instances. What I do know is that, the shipping and logistics team, they are working hard to get salt out to everybody who needs it,” said King.
While Cargill says it’s doing everything possible to keep salt moving, the Cleveland City Council says it wants to make sure they get full transparency.
“We're going to be doing a full investigation into this process, because our goal is to make sure that in the future, the residents of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio are not put in this situation again,” said Shah.
Cargill adds that each day it produces enough salt to fill the lower bowl of Browns Stadium — an amount that was sufficient over the past four years, but not this winter. The company reiterates that the issue isn’t a shortage of salt, but the ability to extract and deliver it quickly enough.
News 5’s weather team says Northeast Ohio has seen its highest snowfall totals since 2014.
