New brine plant means more local roads will be treated in icy weather

A €300,000 brine plant installed in Mullingar means that all regional roads and two local roads, nearly 25km of extra roads, will be gritted this winter. A 30,000-litre rain water harvester tank, a 40,000-litre brine storage tank, a brine saturator and a 40-cubic-metre white salt silo, the first of its kind in the country, have been installed and gritting trucks are being retrofitted for the job.

The R391 from Donore Cross to Ballinea, R398 from Coole to the Longford border and R444 from Seeoge to the Offaly border at Castledaly have been added as well as the Dalystown to Split Hills road via Ballinagore village and from Gartlandstown north to Collinstown village.

The council also hope to add more local roads.

Joseph Harte, executive engineer with Westmeath County Council, says that they grit 444km of road in the county, not including motorways or dual carriageways, which are done by the motorway contractors. They spread 56 tons of salt a night but, the problem with dry rock salt is it bounces off traffic and roads into verges and drains, wasting salt and potentially entering the groundwater table.

When dry salt is added to brine (a mixture of water and white salt), the salt is less “bouncy” and what does hit the ground lasts longer and sticks better and 24% less salt is needed. That means that fewer raw materials have to be hauled across the county and so trucks have extra capacity on each route.

At a meeting of the county council’s Transport and Planning Strategic Policy Committee on Friday week last, Mr Harte said that loading of the saturator which makes the brine is fully automated and requires little operator input – “it’s a very clever system”. The salt silo is the first winter maintenance silo in the country and it too is automated and it means the white salt does not have to be stored on the machinery yard floor.

As the saturator is producing the brine, it pumps it to the storage tank, which has more than enough capacity to cope with the severest winter night. The rain water harvesting tank collects the water to make the brine.

All the council has to do now is retrofit its trucks and that process has started.

Already the council have spent €300,000 including VAT, on the new plant and retrofitting, with help from TII and the Department of Transport.

The committee chairperson, Cllr Hazel Smyth of the Green party, welcomed the news, saying that the new system embraced the council’s climate change strategy. She was delighted to hear they were harvesting rain water.

Cllr Tom Farrell said the system will pay for itself and make roads safer. He wondered if other councils were doing likewise. He was anxious that Westmeath work with other councils to ensure roads bordering other counties, such as the Clara Road in Moate, would be treated.

Cllr Liam McDaniel was particularly pleased that the Dalystown Road was being included as it “has two national schools on it”. He was concerned, however, that the 40,000 litres of brine might go out of date.

Cllr Denis Leonard welcomed the expansion of the programme, remembering a time when the Killucan Kinnegad and the Ballymahon Road, Mullingar, weren’t included in the gritting programme. He wondered if roads that the council share with other counties will be salted on the Westmeath side. He was delighted that the effect of bouncing salt on the environment and on cars was being curbed. He asked if any further roads would be added, particularly “pressure points”.

Damien Grennan, senior engineer with the council, assured members that they are in consultation with neighbouring counties and getting copies of their winter maintenance plans to ensure continuity and that “there are no gaps”. He said that for years Longford have been doing their part of the R396 at Coole and now Westmeath will be doing theirs. Some of the neighbouring counties are also using the brine/ salt system and all are looking at introducing it.

Cllr McDaniel was assured that the salt/ brine mix would be manufactured on demand and would not go out of date.

Over the next year or two, the council will be looking to include other key local roads, ones with high traffic volume and accident history, and will be liaising with the gardaí on that, the meeting heard.

Tributes were paid to the council’s drivers who are of such a calibre that little retraining is needed for them to operate the new system. Mr Grennan thanked TII and the department for helping financially, saying that it would have been “a challenge” without their help.