The State of New Jersey, that lovely state governed by Chris Christie, has a new road problem; this time, it's not a bridge. As you know, the East has been hammered by several storms lately and they're getting another one as you read this. The problem is that they are out of road salt.
Road salt is used to raise the freezing temperature of moisture and is spread on the highways to help keep them from icing over and to help the snow melt. They have 40,000 tons of it ready to ship, but there's a catch. The salt is sitting at a port in Maine, docked until New Jersey
officials obtain a federal waiver. Once that is done, it will take two
days to ship the load from Maine to Newark.
The catch is that the ship is not flying under a U.S. flag and the 1920 federal Maritime Act regulates that no goods on ships traveling from one port to another within the U.S. can be unloaded unless the ship is sailing under the American flag. The nearest U.S.-flagged vessel would take a month to deliver the shipment of salt.
New Jersey is trying to get a Federal waiver. If issued, it will take two days for the salt to reach them. In the meanwhile, they are planning to use a briny pickle juice-like mixture as an alternative; the costs run about 7 cents a gallon as compared to $63 per ton of salt and the brine is considered by some to be less effective.
I guess you can't blame Christie for this one; maybe he should call in the pickled pepper piper from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
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