February 4, 2014
Salt tough to access for some industry members

In the wake of one of the biggest ice storms and continual snow falls in Ontario, there's an unprecedented demand for both bulk and bagged salt and all de-icers. 

"It's created a system-wide shortage," says Fred Persia, director of sales and marketing at Innovative Surface Solutions in Ajax.

Pat Lamanna, owner of Draglam Salt in Concord, says, “There is an unprecedented demand for both bulk and bagged salt and all de-icers, after Toronto experienced the biggest ice storm in history.”

Lamanna went on to say that salt mines are running at capacity and cannot keep up with demand. “They are putting restrictions on orders and some have cut customers off completely.”

Suppliers are currently serving regular customers first, with priority given to prepaid customers who secured their allocation in pre-season. Municipalities are on top of the list, with small contractors the first to feel negative influences on supply.

Persia says the problem is short-term, and doesn’t expect it to last much longer. He added that he was pleased to see that nobody in the industry is ‘gouging’ and taking advantage of the situation.

The last salt supply issue came in 2008, when supplies drastically declined. Issues back then prompted Landscape Ontario to create a Standard Form Snow and Ice Maintenance Contract that offered some defense against slip-and-fall liability during a salt shortage.

The contract states, “The contractor will not be responsible to apply ice melting products unless the ice melting products are commercially and reasonably available to the contractor.”

Toronto attorney Robert Kennaley, who drew up the contract, says “The reason why we say commercially available is that sometimes the client says ‘what do you mean you can’t get salt? I can walk down to the corner store and buy it in a half kilogram bag for five bucks. So pull your truck up to the door and buy all the little bags of salt that they have and come back.’ That’s NOT commercially available.”

With regard to reasonable price, Kennaley adds, “We didn’t get more detailed about that [because] the price of salt is a delicate issue. The owner or property manager might want the contractor to assume the risk of a price escalation. But any contractor concerned that the price of salt might go through the roof may want to consider a more specific or detailed price escalation clause that says if the price exceeds X dollar amount per tonne, then our cost per application or per tonne or per pass will be increased by a certain percentage.”

To strengthen the slip-and-fall defense, Kennaley encourages contractors to place the decision squarely on the property owner as to which ice-melting method (if any) to use in the event of a salt shortage. This requires discussion of various alternatives and owner’s written consent. “We want contractors and owners to understand, and make clear in their maintenance contracts, that the contractor is only hired to do what he or she is paid to do. Where the owner ‘makes the call’ and decides to pay for an option that does not best manage the risk of a slip and fall, the responsibility for that decision should lie with the owner,” he explains.

Ontario salt mines are found in Goderich and Windsor. Goderich is the largest salt mine in the world.

To locate salt suppliers, see LO’s Source Book at www.ltsourcebook.com/.