Spend Green to Go Green?
- Fed up with Chicago streets that look more like the surface of the moon, Mayor Daley said Wednesday he wants to join forces with other Midwest states and cities to purchase a more expensive, but less corrosive kind of de-icing salt.
- “This salt is not environmentally friendly. It destroys everything. It destroys all your roads, the curbs, landscaping. It destroys your car. And if you ever fell in the street, it could slowly destroy all your clothes,” Daley said.
- “You put salt down. It gets warmer. The salt melts and goes into any spaces of concrete, erodes the concrete and you have potholes. You spend an enormous amount of money rebuilding all your roads.
While other cities are paying as much as $140 a ton for rock salt to get through a second-straight brutal winter, Chicago has the luxury of a two-year contract that locked in prices at $40 a ton.
Streets and Sanitation spokesman Matt Smith said he believes the environmentally friendly salt the mayor was talking about is known as “geo-melt.”
It’s a mix of sugar beet juice, without the sugar, salt water and calcium chloride that’s mixed at city facilities, to hold down the cost to $162 a ton and used sparingly.
Even if a Midwest purchasing agreement could be worked out to bring down the cost of the rock salt alternative, Chicago would not be ready to make the citywide switch, Smith said.
“We have six spray trucks we spray it on with. If we were to expand to this, we would have to buy 300 trucks to accommodate it,” he said.
Labels: city politics, dumb ideas
posted by SCC at 12:04 AM
33 Comments:
MSNBC says, "Get Ready to Pimp Your Golf Carts, Chicago"
Well that is until Daley's green salt combined with our monster potholes & full-on arctic temperatures causes the electric car(t)s to become frozen both in the middle and on the sides of our rarely plowed streets.
To add insult to injury, I doubt that any of these tonka trucks will be able to climb over the ridges or out of the ruts on our side streets.
Wow that sounds ike the biggest slumlording ever!
In Indiana they use a salt water solution and spray it on the roads when bad weather is forecasted. It seems very econominal, but then again this is Chicago.
For the love of god!!!!!!!!!!! Can we please see some help form the federal government in stopping this sick run of government. Please!
"It’s a mix of sugar beet juice, without the sugar"
I'm not a sugar beet juice expert, but...
...and I bet it costs extra to extract the sugar, thanks Dick.
less corrosive kind of de-icing salt.
Maybe they can ruin the salt's morale by putting a Fed in charge of it thereby creating an environment where the salt feels like "De-Icing"
It's amazing...so why the hell are officers still writing parkers? Let the private DOR hacks do it...
Stick together, back each other up, protect and serve the GOOD CITIZENS of the city, but don't raise a dime for the corrupt government.
Seiser doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.
Fed up with Chicago streets that look more like the surface of the moon, Mayor Daley...
Let's be clear about one thing here, the Mayor is not fed up with Chicago streets but the criticism of Dick. Ever since the "De-Servicing" of Chicago's streets, he's busting a blood vessel in his little Al Capone-like brain trying to spin this ratings loser winter showgram into a "Daley's Looking Out For You" love story.
LOOK! We don't give a shit if you buy salt from a blatantly Mob connected company, but THROW THE SHIT ON THE STREET WHEN IT SNOWS DUMBASS! Read the fucking directions.
STREET SALT INSTRUCTIONS: Apply generously when snow begins to fall on the pavement. This will cause the SNOW to melt. If the snow continues to fall, REPEAT. Results may vary. Overtime pay REQUIRED.
They used geomelt at our complex a couple of weeks ago; never again. The problems with geomelt is that it turns everything brown and it stinks. Both the stench and the stains lasted for a few days. There were enough complaints that they went right back to using salt after that one geomelt application.
.. PLEASE!!!!
Mayor Shortshanks,put the crack pipe down,ya evil dwarf...
the salt is called soilent green. its made out of people/shortshanks enemies.
Not a cop, and I am no fan of Daley. But he has enough of a point that I have to defend him.
But I buy a lot of Salt for my job, and I have to deal with the corosive afterafects.
Salt contains Chlorine, and it the culprit. This stuff goes after some of the titanium alloys in my factory.
If someone can find an alternative to Salt and Calcium Chloride (more Chlorine) at a real price, maybe you won't have to replace Daley's Wrought Iron and fancy flowerpots.
Still, SCC's pint about substandard construction has a point too.
Let me get this straight, a month ago we had no money to pay for snow removal so the side streets weren't plowed or salted and the main streets would only get plowed after the snow had stopped yet we now miraculously found the money to pay for salt that costs four times as much as we are paying now? I guess another relative must have started another company and I'm sure the city will sign a 20 year contract just in case the midget has a grabber the next mayor can't straighten out this shit-hole city. Mayor Daley, a big FUCK YOU!!!!!!
Why do they use asphalt? Have all concrete roads like in Europe. This tar-like cover sucks..
This is all a game. Daley is just waiting for Obama to shower Chicago with federal taxpayer's money. Then everything will be fine again. Untill the USA defaults on its MASSIVE federal deficit.
I think sugar beet juice is a wonderful idea, in fact I will put it forward at the next meeting of the City Council! It is a fantastic substance and better than anything before tried.
It just so happens that my daughter, Patty, works for a sugar beet juice company that makes this very thing for roads! How fortunate!
It is owned by my esteemed colleague Alderman William JP Banks. How lucky we are to have discovered this! What a coincidence! I shall inform the Mayor and the head of the Department of Streets and Sanitation so that a no-bid contract can be awarded before the spring thaw comes!
How lucky we all are to have this wonderful resource so close at hand! Now my grandchildren's education and future employment is secured.
Sincerely,
Alderman Dick Mell
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Even Kass is writing about the looming Illinois Income Tax increase sure to be voted in as soon as Governor Quinn is sworn in. (Chicago Tribune, Jan 15, 2009)
We need to get a 3% raise JUST TO KEEP MAKING WHAT WE MAKE NOW as Governor to be Quinn wants the income tax to increase from 3% to 6%.
No joke, this will happen. that is why we need to show up IN LARGE NUMBERS at the next General Meeting of the FOP on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 1900 hours. I know, you will have to cut your Inauguration festivities short, this is more important.
We need to say NO to any $3,000 "signing bonus" and get any increase on our paycheck. That signing bonus bullshit has been tried before. That is a one shot deal. An Illinois Income Tax increase is PERMANENT. We need any increase to also be permanent to help offset this Illinois Income Tax Increase.
WHATEVER ELSE YOU MIGHT DO THIS MONTH, COME TO THE NEXT FOP GENERAL MEETING AND STAND UP AT THE MICROPHONE AND LET YOUR FEELINGS BE KNOWN!
next FOP General Meeting
Tuesday January 20, 2009, 1900 hours
NO TO SIGNING BONUS!
PERMANENT RAISE ONLY, RAISES FRONT LOADED, NOT BACK LOADED!
.
Anytime the city is buying anything, look at who is selling it and who they are related to/ connected to; not how it is supposed to work.
We know from experience that it won't work. Then they sell you something else again at higher prices.
This Goof now wants to buy Some Politically Correct Road Salt, for even more money, instead of just fixing the roads the right way like they do in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana, etc.
No Contract for CPD, now even bullshit road salt is more important. Time to March on Shitty Hall Troops. Only about 90 Days till Spring.
Exactly what is "green" salt? How is the salt we're using now harmful for the earth... salt is a naturally occurring element. I just put a bunch of it on my fries.
Land mine pot hole fields that "never" get fixed!
114th to 126th Ave O
106th to 122nd Torrence Ave
130th Street Steel Bridge.
130th to 138th Brainard Ave
126th to 129th Crandolet Ave
Who's ward are these streets in. Hmmm, let me guess. The 10th Ward (Alderman - Do Nuttn' - Pope)
nothing gets done in this city unless a connected person profits !
Yes 300 new trucks!!! At what $80,000 each? from $40.00 a ton with no mixing or labor involved other than loading the trucks. To $165.00 a ton not including the new trucks the cost of building the mixing facilities and the cost of paying how many more people to do the mixing. Oh, did I forget to mension the cost of all the traing involved.
Yep sounds like a good deal to me! If you are the chosen one who gets the great big fat contract.
I wish some one would explain to me why the rock salt the city and all the burbs use, manages to only destroy the streets in the City? The roads in the burbs are in great shape.
IT IS NOT THE SALT DESTROYING THE CITY STREETS. IT IS THE LACK OF MAINTANENCE OF THE STREETS BY THE CITY. BUT THE MAYOR SAID IT, SO IT MUST BE TRUE!
I drove from the City to Crown Point Ind. yesterday. Once out of the City I did not see one pot hole, NOT ONE. I have no idea how many towns I drove through, but the salt is not destroying their streets.
I wonder if the salt the City uses has that Street Destroying Acid in it???
I drove from the City to Crown Point Ind. yesterday. Once out of the City I did not see one pot hole, NOT ONE. I have no idea how many towns I drove through, but the salt is not destroying their streets.
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They use granite aggregate while we use pure Illinois limestone in our roads. It is that simple. They would have to favor out-of-state granite purchases over state contracted limestone to build roads like you see in Wisconsin and Indiana.
I agree that the problem with our roads isn't really the salts fault. Granted the salt is nasty,corrosive and gets on everything but other municipalities also use salt and they don't have the same pothole problem etc. that we do. Surrounding suburbs and the Illinois highways all go through the same freeze/thaw cycle and brutal weather that our roads go through yet they don't suffer from a lot of the problems that our city streets do. Why do you think that is? It wouldn't have anything to do with crooked,rigged contracts and extremely shoddy workmanship would it? How come nobody will ask King Ritchie about this when he's blaming mother nature for our ridiculous pothole problem? I am all for a less corrosive alternative to salt even if it costs more. But what we really need to address is the underlying problem of shitty road construction that the city is overpaying for. Of course King Ritchie's friends with the contracts wouldn't like that kind of talk. They'd rather keep feeding at the taxpayers hard earned money.
"They used geomelt at our complex a couple of weeks ago; never again. The problems with geomelt is that it turns everything brown and it stinks. Both the stench and the stains lasted for a few days. There were enough complaints that they went right back to using salt after that one geomelt application."
--1/15/2009 02:12:00 AM
Yeah, it's something on the order of a very low-grade molasses byproduct, a brown sludge. We had a couple of gallons at home, put it in a plastic pump sprayer and used it on the walkway from the back door of the house through the back yard to the side door of the garage. It kind of seemed to maybe do something, but was enough trouble that we went back to plain rock salt again.
is this a joke?
what a royal asshole.
HOW DO YOU SPELL CROOK? DALEY
The secret of using beet juice is that you say its name three times and the ice is gone.
Which has more holes in it, the streets of Shitcago, or Mayor Rich "the Bitch" Daley's Head ?
Daley is now back to doing a damn good job of keeping the streets clear. Glad to see that the voice of the Taxpayers is still sometimes heard down at Shitty-Hall.
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