Naperville will have enough road salt for the coming winter despite state procurement issues, but could be paying nearly twice as much per ton as it did last year, Public Works Director Dan Randolph says.
Naperville typically secures its road salt through the Illinois Department of Central Management Services’ statewide procurement program. Under that system, local governments obtain salt through the state, which pools together all of the requests received to solicit more competitive bids from vendors.
Historically, that program has produced the lowest costs per ton of salt for municipalities, Randolph said.
This year, however, a large salt supplier chose not to participate in the bidding process, resulting in gaps in salt procurement for some locations, state spokesperson Cynthia Johnson wrote in an email.
As a result, dozens of communities in Illinois — including Naperville — are scrambling to find supplies so they can ensure they’ll have enough on hand before the snow starts to fall.
For the past 10 years, Naperville has used an average of 11,400 tons of salt for the winter. Because it only went through 7,400 tons last winter, the city has roughly 10,000 tons in storage. This year Naperville requested 9,000 tons of salt through the state procurement process but received only 3,000.
Under the state system, local governments make salt tonnage requests for individual salt storage domes. About 260 salt dome locations in Illinois did not receive a bid through the procurement process, according to an email Randolph received from the state.
One of them was in Naperville. The salt dome on Plainfield-Naperville Road received its request but the dome on Fort Hill Drive did not, Randolph said.
It’s not known why the Fort Hill request was not filled, he said, but he’s aware that there is broader supply chain issue and demand for road salt is outpacing the available supply, driving prices up and leaving some vendors hesitant about making bids.
For the salt it did receive through the state process, the city expects to pay about $144 per ton compared to $69 per ton last year, according to an unofficial notice from the state.
That the price would end up being “well above $100 per ton” was a surprise to city staff, Randolph said.
“That would be the highest salt unit price in my experience at a wholesale rate,” he said.
Due to its contract agreement with the state, the city is obligated to purchase at least 80% of the salt tonnage it requested through the state’s procurement process.
After Naperville received notice of the shortfall, it contacted major suppliers like Cargill and Morton Salt about purchasing salt directly from them, but neither supplier could provide a firm price or explain what factors were contributing to their price uncertainty, Randolph said.
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Now the city is buying 4,000 tons from Midwest Salt, a third-party vendor, for about $113.50 per ton.
The state is working on an emergency salt procurement to help communities that did not have their initial request fulfilled. Naperville plans to participate in that to try to obtain an additional 5,000 tons of salt so the city has enough salt to refill its domes by the end of the winter season, Randolph said.
Johnson did not respond to requests for additional details about the state’s salt procurement issues, but Randolph said his conversations with state officials indicate there are two overarching reasons for the price surges.
“One was that last winter the East Coast used a lot of salt, so a lot of the salt storage out east was used up. And then the second factor was that there was kind of these unclear labor issues at salt mines,” he said.
He did not have any further information on the labor issues, he said, but emphasized that despite the salt procurement issues, he is not worried about the city’s winter supply.
“We already have salt in storage. We’re buying 4,000 additional tons from Midwest (Salt) now so that we will have more than sufficient salt in storage,” Randolph said.