VTrans tells Senate Transportation bill’s dust‑suppression reporting would be heavy admin for little chloride

Chair Reich Westman of the Senate Transportation Committee resumed testimony on S.29 and asked Jeremy Reed, chief engineer for the Agency of Transportation (VTrans), to discuss the bill’s provisions on chloride use.

Reed said VTrans supports the general intent of draft 3.2 of S.29 but opposes a reporting requirement on summer dust suppression that would require the agency to track small, dispersed uses of calcium chloride. “It’s just an administrative headache for so very little chloride,” Reed said, citing rough order‑of‑magnitude comparisons between winter road salt and summer dust suppression. He told the committee VTrans spreads about 30,000 tons of salt for winter ice control and somewhere in the neighborhood of 250–300 tons for dust suppression statewide, and that the way crews apply calcium chloride for dust control makes it less likely to enter surface waters than road salt applied on pavement.

Reed provided the committee with year‑by‑year calcium‑chloride amounts reported in VTrans’ purchasing records for dust suppression: 2019 — 3.84 tons; 2020 — 33.8 tons; 2021 — 470.5 tons; 2022 — 267.6 tons; 2023 — 285.6 tons; 2024 — 95.5 tons. He said those figures cover the larger projects in which VTrans pays for dust suppression as a contract line item, and that smaller uses — “50 to 100 pound bags” sprinkled at access points or staging entrances across many contracts — are not separately tracked.

Reed explained that for most contracts dust suppression is treated as a subsidiary item and is not billed or tracked per ton; requiring per‑contract tracking would mean changing contracting practices to add a pay item for every contract and the attendant administrative work. He also said calcium chloride used for dust suppression is typically applied to granular (not paved) surfaces and is absorbed into the gravel rather than immediately running into stormwater conveyances.

Committee members asked procedural and policy questions: Chair Westman urged coordination with the chair of the Natural Resources Committee (referred to in the hearing as Chair Watson) and asked VTrans to work with the bill’s drafter — identified in the hearing as Mike Grady — to produce proposed language the committee could consider. Westman also said if S.29’s crossover schedule causes delay, small changes could be made by floor amendment rather than holding the bill.

Reed noted that the Agency of Natural Resources had proposed removing the dust‑suppression language from their draft and that ANR and VTrans would continue to coordinate across committees. No formal motion or vote was recorded in the transcript portion provided.

The committee heard that VTrans maintains a written snow‑and‑ice control plan and that VTrans already tracks annual chloride use for winter operations through that plan: “we do track how much chlorides we put down, on an annual basis,” Reed said.

What this means: committee members will get proposed bill language from VTrans or the drafter to consider with colleagues across the hall (Natural Resources); VTrans urged limiting added reporting because most summer calcium‑chloride use is small, dispersed and not currently paid as a tracked contract item and because application methods make runoff into stormwater less direct than winter road salt on pavement.

Ending

Committee members and VTrans agreed to continue coordination with Natural Resources and the bill drafter to craft language that addresses agency reporting concerns without unduly increasing contract administration. Chair Westman said the committee could amend on the floor for small changes if needed rather than delay the bill’s progress.