Council salt reserves run low as deep freeze continues

As Arctic weather continues to affect Meath roads, Meath County Council has warned that if the icy conditions continue into next week, they will have difficulty sourcing salt to treat the roads. Council spokesman Bill Sweeney said this winter was the first time the council haS ever experienced difficulties in sourcing salt. 'If this weather continues beyond this week, we will almost certainly be in difficulties, as will other local authorities,' he warned. Met Eireann has predicted the frost to continue over the next few days, following on from last week and last weekend in which heavy snowfall caused travel chaos throughout the county. Air temperatures at night have got below -5 Degrees Celcius and ground temperatures even lower. Much of the snow which fell last week has still not fully melted. The council has carried out 68 salting runs since November and used over 3,000 tonnes of salt, a record since road-salting began in the early 1980s. Mr Sweeney said that, during the heavy snow of Monday of last week, the council gritted for several hours throughout the day and again at 8pm in the evening. All the national primary and secondary routes and heavily trafficked regional routes were treated at 4am and 8am throughout the rest of last week, except Saturday when they were salted at 4am. Sunday"s heavy snowfalls saw the gritters out again at 2am, 9.30am and 8pm and they were out again at 4am on Monday. 'In dealing with snow, we have salted several other locations, including some county roads as the need arose, particularly at the request of Gardai or where roads became impassable. 'Because of the very high level of residential development in the county in the past decade, traffic levels on all roads have increase substantially. However, given the limited physical resources available, our focus as always has to be on the most heavily trafficked routes,' he said. Heavy snowfalls on Sunday left many minor roads around the county impassable and a severe frost on Sunday night meant that motorists faced trecherous conditions on Monday morning as snow and slush turned to hard-packed ice. The village of Moynalty was closed to traffic on Monday morning when a truck got stuck in icy conditions there and roads around north Meath, in particular, were very dangerous. According to Cllr Michael Gallagher, the roads around the north of the county have been dreadful over the past few weeks. 'Drumconrath village was almost impassible for the past two weeks and there have also been major problems on the Moynalty-Kingscourt Road,' he said. Cllr Gallagher said that the Whitehill Road was also very dangerous, adding that two people had accidents on this road while going to work in Drogheda last week.