on January 25, 2025
K.T. is a regular Cafe Hayek patron who lives in New York state. He sent an email to me today, the bulk of which I share here with his kind permission.
For the last few weeks I have heard stories about the ‘salt shortage’ that is impacting local governments’ efforts to keep ice off our roads. Main roads salted, side streets unsalted, lots of slipping and sliding, accidents galore! I couldn’t understand what was going on. There is a big salt mine in the state, in Livingston County, and word from the salt mine was that their ‘union work force’ was working as hard as they could. I had wondered if there was some sort of contract dispute or something.
Now I know what the problem is. In 2022 a bill, introduced by a Democrat, was signed by Governor Hochul. The name of the bill is the “Buy American Salt Act”. It required all governments in the state to purchase their salt from American sources only. As the linked article shows, a small company that plows and salts private property (commercial parking lots, etc) has all the salt it needs. An embarrassing riches of salt! That’s because they are free to source their salt from anywhere – including that ‘enemy’ to the north, that nasty foreign country Canada, a country that for some reason Trump thinks is hurting America. They aren’t hurting us; they’re helping us. Here in NYS, at least our store parking lots are salted thanks to trade with Canada. Too bad many of our side streets can’t be salted with Canadian salt.
WNY municipalities call on New York State to help with rock salt shortage.
