When ice and snow threaten Kokomo this winter, the “super mix” will be the biggest weapon in the city’s snow removal arsenal.

It’s 80 percent brine, 15 percent beet juice and 5 percent calcium chloride, and it represents the cutting edge of snow removal.

When street department superintendent Joe Ewing and foreman Lynn Rudolph attended two days of “snow school” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this summer, they heard all about the super mix.

According to Ewing, the seminar — and discussions with street superintendents from across the Midwest — served to validate two years of experimenting with the city’s snow removal system.

Three years ago, Ewing said the creeping price of road salt led Kokomo’s street department to start looking at alternatives to traditional methods.

Last year, those alternatives — including the use of sugary beet juice (aka “ice bite”) — were put to use in earnest.

Indications from snow route drivers and residents were positive, so Ewing and Rudolph have ramped up the program to become a permanent part of the city’s snow-fighting efforts.

A month ago, the city began construction on a new mixing station.

Engineered and constructed using workers from the street and wastewater departments, the new facility will create super mix — or a brine/ice bite mix, or simply brine — and pump it into tanks mounted on the city trucks.

When a storm is forecast, two things will happen.

First, trucks carrying a brine/beet juice mixture will pre-treat the streets, a process Ewing calls “anti-icing.”

Residents will notice (when streets are dry) the telltale streaks of pretreatment running up and down the primary roads in

Kokomo.

Second, when the storm is hitting, the plow trucks will all be carrying brine tanks, mounted just above their salt spreaders.

The road salt is then “prewetted” as it churns through the spreader.

The brine activates the salt, making it work faster and more effectively. Calcium chloride, which will be used when the road temperatures are 15 degrees or colder, does the same thing, but is more expensive, and is saved for use only in extremely cold temperatures.

The ice bite is basically an adhesive, making the salt stick to the road, and drives down the working temperature even further. As an added bonus, the beet juice reduces the tendency of the salt to bounce off to the side of the road.

Putting everything in place to make prewetting and anti-icing a permanent part of how the city fights snow and ice has been an ambitious project.

Since last year, the city has purchased a 2,500-gallon tank and a 3,000-gallon tank, converted three trucks to carry tanks, and equipped 10 dump trucks with prewetting equipment.

That’s in addition to building the brine mixing/pump house, which is heated so an attendant can be ready to refill tanks throughout lengthy snow events.

“I don’t think anybody else in Indiana has the anti-icing and prewetting capabilities we’ve got,” Ewing said.

The hope, for Ewing and for city taxpayers, is that the new way of attacking slick streets will pay off.

Last year, street superintendents across the country had meltdowns when salt suppliers jacked up their prices.

Salt reached highs of more than $100 a ton, and Ewing, who had enough stockpiled to make it through the 2008-09 winter, refused to purchase any more salt.

This summer, the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns led a charge to create a statewide salt purchasing contract, forcing the salt companies to bid competitively on the salt supply for dozens of cities.

Even cities that didn’t join the IACT purchasing pool — like Kokomo — saw the price of salt tumble.

Ewing signed a contract to purchase up to 4,800 tons at $66.25 a ton with Cargill, and now has more than 3,000 tons sitting out at the street department.

But his hope is that prewetting and anti-icing — while relatively expensive compared to regular road salt — will actually reduce overall salt usage by 40 percent.

“The salt companies have forced us to become more efficient with their so-called shortages and price escalation,” Rudolph said.

If the city can cut back that far on salt purchases, two things will have been achieved, Ewing said.

Not only will the city be doing the environment a favor by using less salt; the salt applied to streets will work more effectively, improving safety.

By laying down anti-icing brine a day or two before a storm, the street department ensures that melting will start as soon as flakes fall. In freezing rain events, ice won’t be able to build on roads before trucks have come by with more brine.

And since the experiment with prewetting and anti-icing is now in its third year, Ewing and Rudolph are hoping for three distinct results.

During winter storms, they say:

• Primary streets should be bare pavement.

• Secondary streets should have bare wheel tracks.

• Residential streets and courts may have packed snow.

“When we used to put salt down, you almost had to wait for cars to come by before it would work. This quickens the process,” Rudolph said.

“It’s going to make us more efficient, and give better service to the citizens of Kokomo,” Ewing said.

• Scott Smith is a Kokomo Tribune staff writer. He may be reached at (765) 454-8569 or via e-mail at scott.smith@kokomotribune.com