Some LI towns low on road salt — just as the next storm is about to hit

As another winter storm sets its sights on Long Island on Thursday, some town highway chiefs say their road salt supplies are alarmingly low.

The double-whammy of two major storms earlier this month — combined with weight restrictions on a New York City highway that have slowed salt deliveries from a Staten Island supplier — has left officials in Brookhaven, Riverhead and Huntington fretting about dwindling stockpiles as they gear up for the next snowfall.

"Everyone is very low," Brookhaven Highway Superintendent Dan Losquadro said, adding that the town's salt sheds, which collectively can hold up to 20,000 tons of salt, were holding only about 25% to 30% of their capacity.

Huntington was down to 3,000 tons of salt last week after sharing some of its supply with other town departments and a water district.

"We’re down big time," Huntington Highway Superintendent Kevin Orelli said. "We never anticipated the difficulty in replenishing our salt. ... Usually when we need salt, we just call up saying we need however many tons and they send it all at once or over a couple of days."

A two-day storm is expected to start Thursday that could bring four to eight inches of snow to Long Island, forecasters say. A winter storm watch running from Thursday morning to Friday afternoon was issued by the National Weather Service.

Long Island highway chiefs said while they have been able to boost their salt supplies, there are long delays before shipments arrive.

Most Long Island towns buy road salt from Atlantic Salt Co., on Staten Island, through a state contract that supplies snow-fighting material to local municipalities. The company delivers salt via trucks that must take the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to reach Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Officials said BQE weight restrictions — which limit payloads to 20 tons because parts of the aging expressway are crippled by corroded cantilevers, the horizontal steel beams and girders that support overpasses — force Atlantic to cut its deliveries almost in half, leading to longer waits to complete orders.

"Excessive weight on the roadway causes serious damage to its structural integrity," the city Department of Transportation wrote Thursday in an email. "We will not make exceptions for weight restrictions."

Joe McNamee, an Atlantic Salt manager, said the company is leasing more trucks and making more deliveries to keep up with demand. Orders were up by 75% in January and so far this month, and deliveries have increased by 42%, he said.

"We’ve had a whole winter in one month," he said. "We’re keeping up, but it’s certainly not ideal."

McNamee said shipping salt by sea is not an option because the company's fleet consists of "deep draft" vessels that "can’t go directly into Long Island."

To be sure, some Long Island municipalities, such as Hempstead, Islip and North Hempstead towns and the city of Glen Cove, said they have sufficient salt supplies.

North Hempstead highway maintenance supervisor Brian Waterson said the town received nearly 700 tons from Atlantic on Saturday.

"We called up, ordered it and got it," he said.

State Department of Transportation spokesman Stephen Canzoneri said in an email the agency, which also purchases salt from Atlantic, "currently has approximately 20,000 tons of salt on hand for treating Long Island’s state roads and we do not foresee any difficulties for our snow and ice operations."

Some towns said deliveries have been a struggle.

Riverhead Highway Superintendent George "Gio" Woodson, who said the town has used roughly half its salt supply this winter, said he would likely have to put in another order of salt to make it through the winter.

"That's kind of hampering our salt deliveries," he said. "Instead of getting it in 10 trucks, it takes 20 trucks to get what we want."

Babylon spokesman Dan Schaefer said Wednesday the town was still awaiting 1,500 tons of salt that had not yet arrived.

Losquadro, who also is president of the Suffolk County Highway Superintendents Association, said Brookhaven was not in danger of running out of salt, "but this is much lower than I ever let my stock go."

Alternative truck routes from Staten Island — such as snaking through New Jersey to the George Washington Bridge, then through the Bronx into Queens — were ruled out because the additional costs would be "completely prohibitive," Losquadro said.

"Our yards were all completely full" before the Jan. 31-Feb. 1 storm that dumped up to a foot and a half of snow on some parts of Long Island, Losquadro said. "Over the course of the past week or two, we just haven’t gotten the quantity of those deliveries."

Brookhaven and Huntington officials said they are mixing salt with extra helpings of sand to stretch out the supply. That mixture improves traction on roads, but it won't melt much ice, they said.

"We’re going to wind up, sooner rather than later, going to sand," Orelli said. "We have a stockpile of sand and salt mixed we can go to, and that will keep us going for while."

With John Asbury, Keldy Ortiz, Ted Phillips, Jean-Paul Salamanca and Dandan Zou

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.com,deborah.morris@newsday.comCarlMacGowan,

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.