Icy winter pushes WSDOT’s road salt budget into the red

Washington state Department of Transportation officials are asking lawmakers to put an extra $5 million into the department’s current snow-and-ice removal budget to cover costs incurred this winter.

“We program our budget based on historical data, but we can only predict so much when we’re dealing with Mother Nature,” said Barbara LaBoe, a WSDOT spokeswoman.

This year’s winter affected the entire state, LaBoe said, straining WSDOT’s stores of road salt and de-icing solution.

And the area is not in the clear just yet, as the National Weather Service is predicting a slight chance of snow this weekend.

WSDOT budgeted $85 million for snow removal in the 2015-2017 state budget, with $26 million of that going for materials and overtime expenses. In December 2015, WSDOT was running about $1.2 million under the projected expenses for snow removal, said spokeswoman Meagan Lott.

But this past December, the budget went $1.4 million into the red, with January and February expected to cost an additional $3.6 million, Lott said.

In December, WSDOT used 27,415 tons of salt statewide, Lott said, about 28.6 percent more than was anticipated. That’s enough salt to load about 3,046 spreader trucks, WSDOT said.

It also used 612,285 gallons of de-icing solution – enough to almost fill an Olympic-size swimming pool – on roads around the state, which Lott said was about 60 percent more than anticipated.

LaBoe said the shortfall does not mean that WSDOT will stop salting roads as needed, but it must balance the budget for the year.

And there could be more snow and ice to come.

In the past 70 years, winter snow seasons have ended around Feb. 23, said Ann Adams, an assistant forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Pendleton office.