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FreezGard prevents ice from bonding By MELISSA MARTIN ASHLAND -- The 14,000 trucks and cars that cross the Siskiyou Summit every day are traveling on roads treated with FreezGard, a chemical that helps melt ice on the pavement. State highway crews working the Siskiyou Summit -- the steepest grade on Interstate 5 -- use a tanker known as the "slime truck" to apply liquid magnesium chloride. The de-icer prevents ice from bonding to the pavement and makes it easier to plow the road after a snowfall by putting a thin layer between the pavement and the snowpack. "We are seeing fewer fatalities and fewer wrecks since we've been de-icing," said Robert Tolman, transportation maintenance manager in Ashland. The evidence was clear two years ago when a de-icing truck broke down on a sunny but cold and frosty day. A series of collisions took place on the same icy curve, Tolman said. "We'd get one cleared up and get called right back out to help with another one," Tolman said. "We must have had 20 to 30 wrecks that day." De-icing can save lives, says Dale Keep, a retired Washington State Department of Transportation researcher. His studies in the 1980s helped start de-icing programs across the Northwest and eventually across the United States. He traveled for the Federal Highway Administration teaching the de-icing science to state highway crews, including workers in Ashland. "When used correctly, it's a phenomenal tool," Keep said. Lives have been spared on the Siskiyou Summit in the seven years crews have been de-icing, according to Tolman. "I remember when I first came here, I did fatality reports about once or twice a month in the winter," Tolman said. "But I haven't done a fatality report due to snow or ice for four of five years now." Liquid magnesium chloride comes from salt from the Pacific Ocean in California, the Dead Sea in Israel and the Great Salt Lake in Utah. FreezGard, the product used on the Siskiyou Summit, is produced by IMC Salt. It pumps brine from the Great Salt Lake through 40,000 acres of shallow ponds located near Ogden, said Terry Naylor, an IMC business manager. The summer sun evaporates water from the ponds, leaving three products: salt, potassium chloride (pot ash fertilizer), and liquid magnesium chloride. "It takes years to complete the process," Naylor said. "And we let Mother Nature do all the work." It's shipped by railcar to Ashland, where crews apply it to the Siskiyou Summit and other mountain passes at least once every 12-hour shift. "We love FreezGard," said Bob Smoot, a highway crew member on the Siskiyou Summit since 1970. "It gives us a faster recovery time after a storm hits." As crews use more FreezGard, they use less sand or cinder, which means fewer cracked windshields for motorists. In the Siskiyous, winter sand totals have dropped from 10,000-15,000 cubic yards to 4,000-6,000, Tolman said. Canada has documented the relationship between car wrecks and de-icing programs. A report by the Insurance Corp. of British Columbia showed an average of 95 to 102 fewer crash-related claims on de-iced highways in the Kamloops area. It has saved insurance companies $348,000 annually, according to Ingrid Brakop of the Winter Road Research and Development department. "It's keeping ice off the road," said Keep, now the owner of Ice & Snow Technologies based in Walla Walla, Wash. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA