Anti-icer issue heads to council

Public concerns over calcium chloride a matter of trust, Hamilton says

A decision on whether the city will continue the contentious use of calcium chloride as an anti-icer for a third winter will remain frozen until all councillors can chime in on the icy debate.

A handful of speakers urged the community and public services committee Wednesday morning to go against the city’s recommendation to continue the current snow and ice pilot program. The four sitting councillors decided to postpone the vote to city council’s Sept. 24 meeting.

Coun. Sarah Hamilton said like last year’s split 7-6 vote, she expects it to be highly divisive.

“For subject matter having to do with snow and ice, it’s going to be pretty hot,” she said after the meeting. “I think we heard from the speakers today, what we continue to hear, is there is a trust issue. We have to go through our questioning of administration to figure out how we regain the trust of the public in our entire snow and ice policy.”

With several residents voicing outrage over suspected damage to concrete and vehicles caused by the brine solution, the city is also facing a $50,000 lawsuit levelled by a southeast Edmonton resident for damage to his two garages.

In a provincial court statement of claim filed Aug. 16, Raymond Glenn Krause said the surfaces of the concrete floors in his two home garages “were damaged due to an accumulation of the calcium chloride that was being used by the City of Edmonton on city streets for snow/ice removal.”

Krause argued the damage, stemming from March of this year, was caused by the breakdown of concrete as a result of the chemical solution and the city should be held responsible because it continued to use the brine even after warnings from residents about the issues.

But the city denied all allegations that calcium chloride caused any damage to Krause’s property in an amended dispute note filed Wednesday, seeking for the claim to be dismissed with costs.

Refuting that the damage was a “reasonably foreseeable consequence of the use of calcium chloride,” the city argued it didn’t act negligently and is not liable for damages. “If the plaintiffs property were damaged by the use of calcium chloride, which is not admitted but expressly denied, the decisions by the defendant ... involved issues of expenditure and the allocation of public dollars for which the defendant can’t be held liable,” the city said in an additional submission added Wednesday.

None of the claims made by either party has been proven in court.

The most recent debate comes after city-commissioned studies found the impact of calcium chloride on asphalt and concrete are minimal while collision numbers are down where the city has met its goal of bare pavement. But critics argued this research is based off last winter with only two brine applications, compared to the prior winter that saw 10.

“It’s limited data and to use that and go ahead, I have grave concerns about that,” said chemical engineer Arthur Potts.

The study on metal corrosion impacts was largely inconclusive based on the two applications, totalling 617,171 litres, last winter.

Hamilton said removing the anti-icer from “the toolbox” might be too risky for safety reasons, but the onus is on the city to engage with the public and understand their concerns, which she feels hasn’t been adequate.

In response to the ongoing concerns, deputy city manager Gord Cebryk said the calcium chloride brine is part of the program because it could be the best mitigation for safer roads in certain conditions — and that is the city’s goal. Without, it could be more difficult to provide safer, bare pavement roads.

“The goal has always been safety and it’s really balancing the tradeoffs between each of the different tools,” he said. “We want to also make sure that we’re minimizing the impact on the infrastructure and on the environment with whichever tool we go with.”

The goal has always been safety and it’s really balancing the trade-offs between each of the different tools.