Green Your Network Blog

Whoever you were rooting for in last weekend’s game of the Green Bay Packers versus the New York Giants, it was the City of Green Bay that covered the spread. Spreading the salt, that is.

Green Bay’s Public Works Department has two new state-of-the-art salt spreaders that waste less salt than conventional spreaders. The new technology pre-wets the salt before it is applied to the roads, which helps the salt better stick to the roads.

Water jets spraying the salt upon release

The new method cuts salt waste down from 30% to 4%. Green Bay plans to retrofit its entire truck fleet with the new system, saving the city an expected $100,000 annually.

Click on the image below to go to YouTube and view WLUK’s news report on the new salt spreaders.

Fans headed to the game and traveling through Detroit might want to check a new online application from Wayne County, Michigan, that lets users better plan for travel through snowy areas. The interactive website is called Compass and it allows users to see where the county’s salt trucks are located as well as which roads have already been plowed. Its most impressive feature allows users to view road conditions from the perspective of a driver.

Zayd Allebban, director of enterprise applications for Wayne County, noted another benefit of Compass – transparency and accountability for taxpayers’ money. “It is taxpayer money that is funding all this, so they certainly have a right to see exactly what we are doing with it.”

A mobile app version for both Apple and Android is currently in development. Projections for 2012-2013 include an even more interactive version that allows users to report roads that need plowing or salting. For more information, see http://www.govtech.com/e-government/Detroit-Snowplow-App.html.

By Consuela Conceptionne

Social Media Manager for UsedCisco.com

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