Vermont transportation officials describe summer chloride use for dust control; LTAP training limited to municipal staff

The Natural Resources & Energy committee heard from Vermont Agency of Transportation officials and the state's Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) on Tuesday about the use of chloride-based products for summer dust suppression and the scope of related training programs.

Jeremy Reed, chief engineer for the Agency of Transportation, told the committee that the agency reviewed five years of purchases for dust suppression and estimated the department paid for roughly 250 tons of chloride-based material per year for summer use. Reed said 2021 was a high point at about 470.5 tons and that 2019 was a low point (the transcript records "3.84" in 2019 but the unit or meaning was not specified). "There's virtually no likelihood that this would become, you know, migrate...into surface water into a receiving body of water. So it's basically absorbed into the soil," Reed said, describing the agency's view that salt applied to open soil is taken up by soil moisture rather than running directly off into streams.

Reed told the committee the agency treats the summer salt use as a relatively small portion of overall material handled for winter maintenance; he said winter road salt use is far larger and highly variable, "off the top of my head, I think we estimate 30,000 tons per winter," and that the summer figure is well below annual winter volumes.

Reed said the agency uses two approaches on larger projects: specifying a chloride or salt line item for predictable, high-volume work, or leaving dust control as an ancillary contractor task for smaller projects. He cautioned that tracking small, retail-sized (50-pound) bags across many projects would create an administrative burden that the agency believes would outweigh benefits.

Todd Eaton, manager of the Vermont Local Technical Assistance Program, described LTAP's statewide training and credentialing effort for municipal road crews. "LTAP stands for Local Technical Assistance Program. We are a two-person team," Eaton said, then outlined the Road Scholar credentialing structure, which covers five focus areas (environmental, equipment, safety, supervisory and technical), class sizes of about 20 to 25 attendees, and roughly 4 to 8 winter-maintenance trainings per year. Eaton said that range allows the program to train "up to 200 people, or municipal representatives a year," and offered a rough statewide participation estimate of about 1,000 municipal staff if every town had an average of four attendees.

Eaton said the LTAP program is supported by federal funds intended to provide technical assistance to municipal governments and therefore must provide training at no cost to municipal employees; as a result, LTAP does not accept private contractors into its classes. "We do not accept any private industry," Eaton said. He explained that offering the same training to private contractors would require a different funding or administrative arrangement because LTAP cannot accept money from private industry under its current funding rules.

Committee members asked whether the state could expand training to contractors if given additional staff or different funding. Eaton said expanding to train private contractors would be difficult under current funding and administrative rules but that the agency could return with further analysis. The committee also planned to review a fiscal note and a new draft of related legislation later in the meeting.

Why it matters: Chloride-based products used to suppress summer construction dust are chemically similar to winter de-icers and can affect soils and water quality; the committee sought numbers on use and program options for reducing reliance on salt and for expanding training on best practices. The LTAP program is a primary vehicle for sharing best practices with municipal crews but is currently restricted from offering the same training to private contractors without a separate funding model.

Questions, limits and next steps: The agency provided multi-year purchase figures but acknowledged gaps in tracking small-scale purchases. The LTAP said it could not charge private contractors under current federal funding rules and suggested returning with a report on feasibility if the committee requested one. The committee also scheduled a review of a fiscal note on the bill draft later in the meeting.