Some are calling Ontario's latest salt shortage unprecedented
Ontario homeowners and contractors are struggling with an unprecedented province-wide shortage of salt, leaving them with few options as an icy encore of freezing rain bears down a large swathe of Southern Ontario.
An incoming storm from Colorado is expected to bring another wintry blast of snow and freezing rain to large area of Ontario, stretching from Windsor to Cornwall, with an area in the middle, stretching from London to Tobermory and Durham to Niagara, expected to be the hardest hit.
The guys are down there working their butts off, as fast as we can get it to surface, it's gone. - Gary Lynch, president of Unifor Local 16-0
The storm is moving in while salt supplies are meagre, thanks to a combination of last year's severe winter weather, a 12-week strike at the Goderich, Ont. salt mine and ongoing flooding at an American salt mine beneath Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio.
"Having a three-month hiatus hasn't really helped the situation," said Gary Lynch, the president of Unifor Local 16-0, the union that represents workers at the Goderich mine.
'Working their butts off'
"We can produce a lot of salt in three months," he said, noting the strike has depleted reserves, which would have been mined and stockpiled over the course of last year's three-month strike.
Since the dispute, Lynch said the mine has been operating 24/7 with most miners working 12-hour shifts to churn out up to 300 tractor trailers worth of salt a day.
"The guys are down there working their butts off, as fast as we can get it to surface, it's gone," he said. "We don't have any stock."
The same is true on the retail level, where stores in the Windsor area have reported selling out quickly of what few shipments arrive, while there are also reports of stores in the London and Waterloo regions turning customers away because of empty shelves.
Private contractors look further afield
The dearth of locally available salt has forced many private contractors to look further afield to places such as Morocco or Egypt where prices are higher because government contracts take priority for salt miners in the Great Lakes basin.
"The salt price went up 50 per cent," said Dennis Leonhardt, the owner of London Snowplow and Landscape, who called the situation unprecedented. "Last year, I was paying $96 a tonne and this year I'm paying $145."
Leonhardt said what makes the situation unprecedented is the fact this is the first time he's ever had to requisition salt from a foreign country, saying supplies are scarce not only in Ontario, but also most of the eastern United States.
"My supplier doesn't expect it to become a whole lot better," he said. "This may become the new norm."
Leonhardt said he believes once prices spike like they have this winter, it will be almost impossible for them to return to the levels they were even a year ago.
"Maybe it will go down to $120," he said. "I don't see it going back down to what it used to be."
