If not rock salt, wood chips?

MONTREAL • Several Quebec municipalities that want to reduce their use of rock salt are turning to beet juice and wood chips as alternative deicing options.

Eric Westram, the mayor of Montreal- area Rosemere, says the Swiss have been using wood chips on roads in the Alps instead of salt since 2008 and “there’s no contest.”

“We’ve been using it for three weeks on two streets near a river where there’s a lot of dampness and a lot of ice formation,” he said Tuesday, pointing out that salt is only effective to temperatures as low as -15 C, while wood chips are good to about -30 C.

The c hips are mixed with magnesium chloride, which helps them stick to the ground, he said. The product is applied with the same equipment that’s used for salting and sanding, but doesn’t cause oxidation or damage to the metal machinery.

“I think we found something that has a future,” Westram said. “We used it ( Tuesday) on a street where the slope is really steep and it’s like there was no ice.”

Fanny Poisson, a spokeswoman f or Cowansville, about 90 kilometres southeast of Montreal, says the town has opted for a mixture of beet juice and salt for a second winter in a row.

“It adds certain properties to the salt to give it a more adherent quality and is also better for the environment,” she said.

Poisson says other municipalities have tried it, as well as Quebec’s Transport Department, which has used it on certain provincial highways.

Statistics Canada estimates that close to five million tonnes of road salt are used in Canada each year.