FOREST PARK, Ga. — Georgia Department of Transportation trucks are ready to roll as winter weather threatens metro Atlanta and north Georgia.
Drivers will spread brine, a saltwater solution that helps prevent ice from forming on the road, on 20,000 miles of road in the region.
Throughout the day Wednesday, trucks filled their tanks with the brine at GDOT’S Maintenance Activities Unit in Forest Park. Trucks have come in from other regions of the state to lend assistance.
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“When we have a metro area activation, we have crews from South Georgia come up to the area,” Natalie Dale, a GDOT spokeswoman, told Channel 2′s Bryan Mims. “As a state agency, we’re very much all hands on deck during these emergency weather scenarios.”
Things have improved since the winter storm known as “Snowmageddon” paralyzed metro Atlanta in January 2014. Dale said the state had no large stockpile of brine back then, but GDOT has the capacity to store 1.7 million gallons of it and can produce 60,000 gallons in an hour.
“So we have really grown as a department since then with the materials we used,” she said.
The state also has sensors at 57 locations that allows GDOT to learn in real time any changes in road conditions.
“It can tell us whether the road is slick, whether it’s coming down as slush or ice so we can see in real time whether we need to remove people and where to move materials,” Dale said.
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The brine treatment for metro Atlanta is set to begin at midnight and stretch well into Thursday. Treatment for areas north and west of Cartersville will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Joe Schulman, a GDOT spokesman for that region, said drivers will be working out of three brine facilities. He described brine as effective in fending of ice and snow on the roads. “Once the liquid evaporates, you’re gonna have this thin layer or salt,” he said. “The nice thing is it doesn’t matter if people are driving over it, it’s still gonna be there.”
It’s expected to take about 12 hours to treat the roads in the region’s road, with priority given to interstates and other major roads.
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