CLEVELAND — After an early start to winter last November, with multiple storms taxing the salt supply in cities across Northeast Ohio, Cleveland City Council approved the administration's request to up the level of preparedness for what is to come.
This comes after a massive salt shortage this past winter.
RelATED: Communities across Northeast Ohio facing salt shortage
Council approved the purchase of an additional 75,000 tons of salt this year, which is up from last year's order of 70,000 tons. But just as important is the fact that the city has made arrangements to store an additional 7,000 tons of salt above ground and tarped so that crews will have immediate access to it in a storm rather than waiting to be resupplied by Cargill.
"I think each pass in the city is about 7,000 [tons]," said Councilman Kris Harsh during a May 11 council committee meeting on the subject. "So we've added a whole extra pass without a cost that we sort of just rearranged things and moved things around and found room for it."
The mayor's office told News 5 that what happened last year was out of their control; this was something they could do that was within their control.
"We couldn't control how quickly we were being provided with the inventory," said Tyler Sinclair, a spokesperson for Mayor Justin Bibb. "We're not a salt production company, so we can't control when there's a shortage, but what we can control is stockpiling going into the season and making sure that we have enough capacity in places to store that."
Good news to council members who heard from their constituents about the roads during that early winter onslaught.
"This took quite a bit of the airtime last winter," said Councilman Kevin Bishop during that earlier council hearing. "I got blamed quite a few times for not having the streets salted last year."
So too did Councilman Tanmay Shah, who wanted to see the city pursue legal action against Cargill in an effort to ensure this wouldn't happen again.
RELATED: Salt shortage or supply surge? Cargill responds as Cleveland demand answers
"I was looking for the law department on following through on consequences for contract failure," said Shah. "We can enforce our boundaries and make sure companies, especially multi-national, multi-billion (dollar) companies like Cargill, actually hear us and they're not going to do that unless we enforce our boundaries."
News 5 reached out to Cargill to see if they were making any changes to their winter preps this summer, but did not hear back. In January, they told us there was never a shortage of salt, just extremely high demand after seeing a 30-to-40 percent increase in the early winter.
"It just put a strain on the entire network of de-icing products," said PJ King, Cargill Cleveland's Surface Operations Manager, in January. To meet the demand, King said they increased production. "Our operators are working like I said 6, 7 days a week, 12 hour shifts around the clock to get salt going."
Shah said he's comfortable with the steps the city has taken to protect against a repeat.
"Absolutely. At least right now, I can verify that our departments are doing what they need to and they prepared, they've planned ahead. There's only so much we can plan with the variable amounts but I'm hoping, they're doing their part but we want to make sure that Cargill upholds their deal," he said.
