Finance Committee - 1/17/2018 Page 4
Ms. Schena
We had an effective start date of December 15, so we’re hitting the ground running.
MOTION CARRIED
From: Dan Kooken, Purchasing Manager
Re: Purchase of Henderson Liquid Anti-lce Spraying System (Value: $245,993)
MOTION BY ALDERMAN KELLY TO ACCEPT, PLACE ON FILE AND AWARD THE CONTRACT
TO PENWAY SALES AND SERVICE IN THE AMOUNT OF $245,993. FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE IN
DEPARTMENT 160, ENGINEERING; FUND: GRANT
ON THE QUESTION
Jon Ibarra, Superintendent of Streets
The money funding this particular venture is part of that $1.3 million from the state that was given to the city in
a one-time investment. Anything to do with bridges or roads or maintenance of those, you can spend those
funds on. We're trying to keep up with the technology in treating the winter conditions. We have attended a
lot of conferences related to snow and ice. It seems the way many states are going in the treatment of the
winter conditions is brining. Salt brine, salt water, sometimes mixing sugar items like beet juice or molasses
with it to get a more effective operating temperature. You can reduce your use of salt through brine making.
This will be allowing us to make and store, load trucks. We can make between 6,000 — 9,000 gallons an hour
with this particular setup, load our own trucks, three trucks at a time. There will be three filling stations. The
liquid application would be like you see out on Route 3 where you see the state putting down the brine prior to
a storm. Typically our operation now, we go out and pre-salt just before an event because we’re putting down
dry rock salt. Dry rock salt needs the moisture to start the chemical reaction. It doesn’t work until it has gotten
wet. When you put liquid brine down, it is going to be activated right away. We can go out as much as 24
hours in advance so the day before an event, we can go and pretreat the roads. That buys us time in time of
an event as far as treating and plowing.
Liquid application is one tank you will see in the setup. Then we have a prewet system. Those are saddle
tanks that will go on the side of our spreaders. We can wet with liquid brine as we are applying the rock salt.
It’s just a couple of different applications for that material. It will reduce salt. I’ve seen numbers as far as 30
percent reduction in salt cost.
Mayor Donchess
The City gets an annual highway block grant of about $1.4 million and that goes up a little bit every once in a
while. This was a one-time addition of $1.3 million which could be used towards paving or anything related to
road maintenance or treatment. We have already embarked on a five-year paving plan of action. We have
already committed to that. Last year, we decided to devote the money to equipment to help maintain roads
and a few other projects. This as the superintendent said will help snow operations by enabling trucks to go
out with brine solution well in advance. We won't have to wait for the storm to start. We can put it down on the
streets. It will probably enable broader coverage, may reduce salt costs and will help abate a growing
environmental problem which is we’re finding more sodium in the Nashua River, and | think the Merrimack as
well, which is coming from the snow removal operation. It is something that the DES monitors and we report to
DES. This will help abate that while really improving snow removal operations at the same time.
MOTION CARRIED
UNFINISHED BUSINESS — None
NEW BUSINESS — None
