As Michigan faced large amounts of snow and subzero temperatures, some areas struggled to keep up. Cities including Lansing, Brighton and Eaton Rapids issued notices as they struggled to find enough road salt to keep the roads clear. Many of them have limited salt to busy intersections, school bus routes, or high traffic areas.
“The challenge is that every single road agency in, at least, Southeast Michigan has used a lot more salt this year than in recent past years, and the salt suppliers are trying to resupply everybody at the same time and they have a finite number of trucks that can deliver salt,” according to Craig Bryson, senior communications manager for the Road Commission for Oakland County.
Oakland County's road commission maintains the largest county road system in the state. Bryson said logistical challenges and delivery delays, not the amount of salt, have been worsening conditions.
“What we're seeing is a delivery challenge on the part of the salt vendors. We are not out of salt. We have less on hand than we would like, but we don't consider it a shortage,” he said.
However, Bryson said with very low temperatures, salt may not help clear the roads anyway. When temperatures reach below 15 degrees Fahrenheit, road salt becomes significantly less effective. This can help municipalities conserve salt, according to Bryson.
“The cold temperatures have sort of helped with the salt situation because when it gets down into the single digits, we don't really salt except in emergencies because salt is pretty ineffective at the single digits,” he said.
Andrew Kilpatrick, public services director for the city of Lansing, said his department was also struggling with salt supply and delivery delays. Lansing released a notice warning residents that the city would be focused on major roadways. The city also used a mix of sand, chloride, and road salt, which both conserved salt and was more effective in extreme cold.
“Some of it was related to salt itself, but not necessarily the amount we had on hand,” Kilpatrick said. “A lot of it was due to the really cold temperatures."
As in Oakland County, Kilpatrick said Lansing faced logistical challenges and delivery delays that required them to conserve resources.
“The real concern for us had been the fact that we did not know when we were going to get our delivery in, and I think people around the state were in the same situation,” Kilpatrick said.
The city of Lansing has used more salt than usual this year, according to Kilpatrick, and delivery challenges have made it worse.
“I think we'll probably be at the high end of what a typical season is for us now, but the challenge this year has just been the delivery of salt with everyone ordering it all at the same time,” he said.
The Michigan Department of Transportation said at the state level, there is not a shortage of salt. Carl Fedders, region support engineer at the Michigan Department of Transportation, said in addition to logistical concerns, budgetary worries may also be playing a role.
“Municipalities and MDOT who are putting out those notices are probably working under the assumption that they may be coming up at the end of the year using a tremendous amount of salt. And there's budgetary concerns with that,” he said.
Salt use can cause pollution and raise environmental concerns, especially in winters that bring higher than usual amounts of snowfall or colder than normal temperatures.
“Environmentally, it affects the fish, the macroinvertebrates, the amphibians, the microbes, the plankton, essentially all steps of the food chain are affected by too much salt in the waterways. It can kill plant life both in the stream, like aquatic life, as well as roadside plants, grasses, natives,” said Samantha Puckett, clean water program director for the Izaak Walton League of America, an environmental group.
It can also degrade infrastructure such as cars and bridges, in addition to wearing down the interior of pipes, increasing risk for heavy metal consumption, according to Puckett. Although healthy people are unlikely to see negative health effects from water with high levels of road salt, it can be dangerous for those with some health conditions.
“Typically, the amount of salt in our drinking water isn't enough to affect the average healthy person. But if you're on an extremely low sodium diet, if you have chronic kidney disease, if you have hypertension, too much salt in your drinking water can affect you more drastically,” Puckett said.
Unfortunately, there is no perfect replacement for road salt.
“There's no silver bullet perfect chemical solution that we have that we're just missing out on. We use lots of road salt because it's cheap. Despite salt shortages, it is a cheap resource to use. And then it is effective with melting down to a certain level. But what folks don't realize is below certain temperatures, that salt doesn't actually work on melting any more effectively. And also more salt doesn't actually mean more melting power,” Puckett said.
However, alternatives are being investigated. Lawmakers ordered the MDOT to study how agricultural waste, including things like sugar beets and corn starch, could be used on roads to help melt ice. The pilot program, conducted on three stretches of highways in the lower peninsula, ended in 2025 and showed promising results under certain weather conditions.
