Edgewood General Services Director Rick Lunnemann talked to council Monday night, outlining a plan to create a new, larger salt dome for the city, to be located on the same site as the present salt dome on South Loop road.
“I’m here tonight to talk to you about a potential project for next year’s fiscal budget for General Services department,” Lunnemann said. “Brian (Dehner) and I have been talking about this since my first winter here. It’s a project that in my opinion I would recommend we should look at seriously because of our limitation on being able to store salt for road treatment.”
He showed a slide of the current salt dome.
“This particular facility stores approximately 325 to 350 tons of salt,” Lunnemann said. “During the snow event, on Feb. 3 and 4, and it also went into Saturday and Sunday as well, our department used 382 tons of salt. So if our capacity is 325 to 350, and we used 382 tons of salt during that one event, if, for example, like last year when we had multiple events consecutively, for about a month at a time, then that really creates an issue with our ability to have enough salt on hand to treat the roads.”
Lunnemann said if the city doesn’t have enough salt, they can borrow it from Kenton County, or from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, or buy it from their vendor, but that depends on if the county has enough to lend, or if the KYTC has enough to lend, and the vendor has enough to sell.
In addition, he told council, going to another location to borrow salt takes trucks out of the city for a significant amount of time.
Last year rumors ran around the neighborhoods that the city was out of salt. Lunnemann said they had not run out of salt, but that was because they bought and borrowed salt from their vendor and other agencies. He purchased 509 tons last winter, but that didn’t include the amount of additional salt he borrowed and purchased from other entities and had to pay back.
This year they are up to 1032 tons of salt, that they have used for the snow events in January, February and the light snow in March.
Lunnemann showed slides of a new salt dome that the city could build for $251,300. It has 10 foot walls and a canopy top that would stretch 15 or 16 feet above the walls. The whole structure would be 45 feet wide and 50 feet long, and it would be able to hold 850 tons of salt. The current structure is about 12 feet wide and about 25 feet long, and not nearly that tall.
The price would include a geotechnical study for $18,500 to see if the soil is good enough to build the structure. Lunnemann said he would like to put the new dome behind the garage where the current one is but a lot of the land behind the garage is on fill dirt, and they would have to put footers in the ground about five to six feet down.
City Administrator Brian Dehner told council that when the salt comes to the city, the truck that carries it brings 25 pounds at a time. Since the truck can’t drive into the current salt dome, the truck dumps the salt outside and the city has to get a front loader and shovel all the salt into the dome.
With a new dome, the truck could drive at least part of the way inside and dump the salt into the facility without having people in the general services department stop what they’re doing and shovel the salt so it isn’t outside.
Dehner said they would like to keep the facility they have now so that they can store vehicles in it, as well as keeping their calcium chloride tanks there, so they have the capacity of storing 1000 or more tons of salt. They will also gate the front of the facility. It was mentioned that the city of Florence has a large salt dome, and indeed, they have one on Tanners Lane that can store 1000 tons of salt, and another smaller one on Rosetta Drive which houses about 600 tons.
“It’s getting more interesting with every event that we do,” Dehner said. “I don’t think it’s going to get better. I think we should probably make ourselves afford it. I told Rick, in ten or fifteen years someone is going to say ‘who were the smart people who put that in because we need that thousand tons on a regular basis’. I just think long term it’s something we really need.”
The breakdown of the cost is $124,000 for the concrete footing, the 10-foot walls and the floor, $70,000 for the 45-foot by 50-foot long clear span structure, $18,500 for the geotechnical investigation, design and bidding, and 38,800 for the contingency, in case something costs more than the estimation, or the supply chain results in a higher cost. The total estimated cost is $251,300.
The presentation was done at this time so that council can be aware of the needs of the city concerning storage of salt to treat the roads, and CAO Dehner can know whether to put it into the new budget. With the favorable consent of council, Lunnemann will be able to look into getting the geotechnical part of the study started so they can see what kind of soil is available.
Council approved a resolution starting the process for a grant to be able to get a crumb rubber base for the playground in President’s Park.
An ordinance passed which approved the amendment to all residential zones in the city to include child care for 6 or less children as a conditional use, and to further define the designation.
Another ordinance passed which restrictions on wall signs and service stations in the city. CAO Dehner said that this is the last stipulation that Kroger wanted the city to do before they will start demolition on the old Kmart site.
An ordinance passed which amends the 2021-2022 budget, and another ordinance passed which codifies all the ordinances passed last year.
The annual Easter egg hunt will be Saturday, April 2 at 2 pm for ages 3 to 8. Mayor John Link emphasized that the hunt will start promptly at 2 pm, and said it goes fast so don’t be late, he warned.
