The City of Edmonton will use less calcium chloride on its roads this winter.
In a report about the anti-icing brine pilot project released Thursday, the city said calcium chloride did not impact the quality of stormwater that discharges into the North Saskatchewan River last winter.
However, the city will reduce the amount of calcium chloride, and hire an external consultant to monitor its impact on roads, bridges and vehicles.
“We learned where there are certain circumstances where it works really well,” Janet Tecklenborg, the city’s director of infrastructure operations, told CTV News. “We want to take all those learnings and reach bare pavement in the least amount of material as possible.”
Administration is recommending expanding the project into this winter and collecting more data to see how calcium chloride works on different types of infrastructure.
It also wants to expand the project to residential areas for the 2019-2020 winter, and requested just over $4 million from the 2019-2022 budget to improve the application of anti-icing and de-icing products.
With files from David Ewasuk
