Vegetable juice ice-melt?  Ice-free pavement? "Smart snowplows"?  

Cold-climate researchers at Washington State University are clearing the road with 'green' alternatives to salt.

Do they work? It depends on whether or not you are getting paid to work on them. Washington state has become rather famous for disastrous experiments using sand and rubber-tipped plows all because of environmental claims that salt would be bad for Puget Sound. What body of water is already salt water? Puget Sound. What is actually bad for inland waterways? Silt, which is primarily sand.

Xianming Shi, associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, says there are public concerns about salt's impact on the environment and how it will affect future generations. Perhaps among the Seattle people who are afraid to vaccinate their kids but among everyone else there are greater concerns about crashes due to ice. In 2008, when all of those other fads were tried and led to public safety hazards, the people of Seattle tossed out the 'green' mayor behind the idea, Greg Nickles, in the primary. 

Shi is assistant director of the recently established Center for Environmentally Sustainable Transportation in Cold Climates, which studies cold climate "road ecology," and promotes green snow and ice control plus issues with wildlife crossings, fish passages, dust and the use of recycled materials in pavement. National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation researchers who don't get funded needn't be outraged they were funded instead, like they were about $10 million in NIH funding for a video game about how to escape a town of fat people that no one ever actually got to play. This was funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation and when it comes to wastes of taxpayer money,  $1.4 million for vegetables juice ice melting is probably a pretty good deal.

The U.S. spends $2.3 billion each year on the removal of highway snow and ice and Shi claims there is another $5 billion to mitigate the "hidden costs" associated with the process. 

Hidden costs? It's pretend metrics, like virtual water and 'hidden' CO2 in beef. Basically, it is a made-up number to make alternatives to salt look viable. It's environmental "jobs saved or gained". 

Though snow and ice control were simpler for our forefathers - just plow the road and put on some salt, there were not more accidents per car back then - Shi believes making it highly technical and involving detailed science and engineering will improve things.

"There is a lot of talk about beet and tomato juice deicers that are meant to be less corrosive to vehicles, guard rails, steel bridges and concrete pavement," he said. "They help, but there is still plenty of room for improvement."

Besides tweaking the recipes for beet deicer, Shi has successfully developed an ice-melt composed of leftover barley residue from vodka distilleries.

So maybe you can drink the slush when your car crashes because the ice was still on the road.

Shi presented his findings on environmental stewardship practices for winter roadway operations at the American Public Works Association Western Snow and Ice Conference in September.