"We've had a lot of mixed precipitation around the freezing mark, one thing after another, from freezing rain to snow squalls. " Bill Boynton, the public information official for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, said. "All of this requires repeated runs."
While the state of New Hampshire manages its 4,800 miles of state highways and state routes, towns control independent road maintenance. The state transportation bureau and many town offices buy salt from a limited number of vendors, and the sudden rise in demand due to weather conditions across New Hampshire has caused a shortage of salt.
"You can only buy as much storage as you have, and most places don't have enough storage capacity to deal with this kind of winter," Boynton said.
Hanover and other New Hampshire towns have been uniquely affected by the salt shortage due to weather conditions and increased cost of transportation.
The town of Hanover finds itself spending the majority of its budget for winter road maintenance.
"Right now we estimate that 90 percent of the winter budget and 85 percent of the overtime budget have been used, where in past years those respective budgets have only been 65 percent used at this time," Peter Kulbacki, director of Public Works of Hanover, said. "We are in the next fiscal year right now and may need to cut back our gravel roads program budget for this year."
For the last storm, Hanover was completely without salt and ended up having to borrow from the state. The lending of salt between town and state is a last resort for both parties, according to Boynton, so Hanover has sought an alternate salt provider.
"We have found a supplier now, but the price is about double," Kulbacki said. "We can get salt now, but we can't always get it as often as we like."
In the past, suppliers tended to deliver salt quickly, but this season Hanover's alternate distributors have delayed delivery for up to a day. As a result, the town cannot respond quickly enough to this winter's frequent storms, according to Kulbacki. Hanover has resorted to mixing salt with sand, which they also ran out of, he said.
"Ice has been building up a lot of roads, and that is because we do not have enough salt to keep snow from adhering to the surface," he said. "This takes a toll on equipment when scraping it off and the highway crew has been working overtime."
Maintaining safety remains a top priority for the N.H. DOT, Boynton said.
"We are not cutting back in any way in terms of jeopardizing safety," Boynton said. "We are approaching it by doing it now and worrying about how to pay for it later."
Facilities, Operations and Management maintains the College's private roads and pathways. FO&M could not be reached at press time, but students have noticed a significant amount of ice on walkways.
"One of my friends fell twice on the way from astronomy [class] back to her dorm," Sonia Rao, '11 said.
The ice has resulted in a number of minor injuries, and the melted ice creates large puddles that make it difficult to navigate campus walkways, according to students.
"They haven't even been salting, or at least have been doing it sparingly," Elizabeth Dietz '08 said. "We go to Dartmouth, I feel like they should know this by now."
As forecasts continue to predict flurries and mixed precipitation, the situation may not improve, according to Kulbacki.
"If we had at least some foresight, then we might be more able to say we can expect that we can find a way through this," he said. "We'll keep trying the best we can."
