By mid-February, the town had used almost all of its $125,000 salt budget. It wasn’t that there was all that much snow, said Matt Riiska, but the freeze-and-thaw cycles put a lot of ice on the roads. “I’d be happy if we only have to buy another 300 tons,” said Riiska.

The town budgeted for 1,700 tons of salt this year, allowing for the application of 40 tons of salt per mile of road over the course of the winter.

“Last year,” said Riiska, “we went over budget and spent $205,000 on salt, which comes to almost a thousand tons more.”

Partly for economic and partly for environmental reasons, Riiska is working to reduce the town’s salt consumption, noting that other towns in the area, notably Salisbury, use a fraction of the amount that Norfolk does.

“My concern,” says Riiska, “is when it’s not being used as ice melt but as grit. It’s awfully expensive grit.”

He explains that the town has five salt trucks, sometimes adding a sixth. None has a computer-assisted application system that would vary the salt output with the speed of the truck. “Basically there are three settings: low, medium and high. And then you can switch it off when you come to a stop.”

Riiska, who attended a workshop on green snowplowing earlier this year, is paying close attention to details. “I’d like to see the trucks calibrated to 260 pounds per lane/mile on the medium setting,” he says, “because sometimes you have to use more.”

The Conservation Commission, meeting on Feb. 20, proposed to identify at-risk areas for salt, typically where a wetland lies below a road, with the suggestion that these be treated as low-salt areas. They are also in the early stages of planning a long-term water-testing regimen.

“We need to get the message out to everyone in town,” says Riiska, “that salt usage is going to go down and they’ve got to drive accordingly.”