Athens has been awarded a $24,294 Ohio Environmental Protection Agency grant to reduce roadway salt runoff into local waterways, the mayor announced during the city’s weekly update.

The funds come from the Ohio River Chloride Reduction Grant Program, which the mayor said distributed roughly $2,700,000 across 52 communities in this cycle. The city plans to use the money for salt‑management equipment — including new plows and a road‑salt controller that provides real‑time usage data — and to study the feasibility of low‑cost truck‑tracking for salt application.

"We're getting a large grant to help with our road salt apparatus that we currently have in the city of Athens," the mayor said during the broadcast. He framed the measures as efforts to reduce salt runoff into waterways and to improve data‑driven salt application.

City officials did not supply additional procurement or vendor details on the record. The mayor said the award will help Athens join other communities in the grant cycle but did not specify an implementation timeline or exact deployment dates for the equipment.

What happens next: city staff will handle procurement and any pilot testing; no formal council vote or ordinance was announced during the update.