Beet Juice on the Road

  • The new de-icing product, GeoMelt, would use less salt than other methods of de-icing roads. (Photo by Lester Graham)

There’s been rising concern in recent years over the environmental impact of
road salt. The salt helps melt ice on the roads, but it corrodes cars and
damages bridges and concrete. Now, there’s a new way to help de-ice
roadways, and it comes from sugar beets. Dustin Dwyer reports:

Transcript

There’s been rising concern in recent years over the environmental impact of
road salt. The salt helps melt ice on the roads, but it corrodes cars and
damages bridges and concrete. Now, there’s a new way to help de-ice
roadways, and it comes from sugar beets. Dustin Dwyer reports:


The product is called GeoMelt, and it mixes with a salt brine to drop the freezing point
along roads. This method uses less salt than the traditional way of de-icing roads.


Chris Duffy is a GeoMelt salesman. He says it’s essentially de-sugared sugar beet
molasses. And it doesn’t require any new chemical processes:


“It’s considered a co-product of the sugar process. And, you know, what they were using
it for was a cattle feed. And we just have come up with a different use for it.”


GeoMelt also helps cut the amount of salt washing onto farmland where it can ruin crops.
Duffy says thousands of cities in every northern state are now using the sugar beet-based
product.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

A Brighter Future for City’s Forest Preserves?

Elected officials say politics and mismanagement have led to the decay of forest preserves around one of the Great Lakes region’s largest cities. They say a shift in control of the forest preserves and 100-million dollars will correct the problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton reports:

Transcript

Elected officials say politics and mismanagement have led to the decay of
forest preserves around one of the Great Lakes region’s largest cities. They
say a shift in control of the forest preserves and 100-million dollars will
correct the problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton reports:


Cook County’s Forest Preserve District manages 68-thousand acres of
forest preserves in and around Chicago. Commissioner Forrest Claypool
says something needs to be done soon because years of mismanagement
have left the land and its facilities in horrible condition.


“How can you possibly serve in the summertime these thousands of
families who come into the forest preserves and not provide decent
restrooms – not to mention bridges that are about to fall apart, not
to mention picnic shelters that are burned and falling down, and so
covered with gang graffiti that they’re intimidating and create an
impression of this unsafe place to be.”


Claypool says the Cook County Forest Preserve has been a dumping
ground for political patronage… including a recent financial scandal
which cost the agency almost 20-million dollars.


Three county commissioners say they have a 100-million dollar plan to
fix the dilapidated facilities and clean up the forest preserves… all
without raising taxes. The plan calls for borrowing the money by issuing
bonds. But that means they’ll need the Illinois governor’s approval.


County officials say they would save money by gutting that “bloated”
administration of the Forest Preserve District and turning over many
of its responsibilities to the county.


But nature advocates are wary that the shift in control might compromise the forest
preserve’s mission of holding and acquiring natural land.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.