De-icer mix can't be beet

COEUR d'ALENE - Your car driving over concentrated sugar beets is keeping Coeur d'Alene's streets free and clear of ice.

That's right, the city's street department makes its own de-icer, 20 percent of which comes from concentrated sugar beets in southern Idaho, and the concoction - the brainchild of Street Department Superintendent Tim Martin - has chopped the city's de-icing bill by more than half.

No, the streets don't run red after the de-icing trucks come out.

And licking the pavement after they pass wouldn't be good for you.

"It's an earthy smell," Martin described the concoction. "This is not the type of sugar beet you eat."

It's actually extract from making sugar cane, and when the brown, molasses-like mixture is combined with the rest of the a salt brine, it's a match made in exothermic heaven.

Behind the science, the beet product is attracted to the salt, and when cars travel over it, it heats the whole product and allows the ice to melt.

The idea came to Martin during a American Public Works Annual Snow Conference, in Peoria, Ill., in the mid 2000s. Martin was there to talk about Coeur d'Alene's snow gates, the devices on snow plows that operators can use to prevent snow from piling up in driveways. The program alone makes Coeur d'Alene a rarity, as one of six or so cities who use it. But at the conference Martin learned of the possibility of making their own de-icer.

But the key ingredient to make de-icer was too expensive to buy in bulk from the Midwest.

So Martin researched, and found that beet juice byproduct could be a good alternate. He bought the first shipment from Amalgamated Sugar Inc. in Nampa.

Idaho, at the time, was the second biggest beet producer in the country, he said.

Now, the city spends between $14,000 to $17,000 a year de-icing. Before it started making its own mix in January 2009, it would spend about $41,000 a year by spraying magnesium chloride. It breaks down to costing about .31 cents a gallon now, compared to more than $1 a gallon the old way.

And since the homemade concoction relies on the heat of traffic for optimal results, the city only spreads it on the busier, arterial streets.

Just keep your tongue off the pavement.