Salt companies say they have hard time keeping up storm to storm

CORAM (WABC) -- Long Island residents are really living storm to storm. Think about it - when all of the storms come back, the highway supervisors are all calling in Atlantic Salt saying they need more. Atlantic Salt tells Eyewitness News that they're honestly having a hard time keeping up.

"With a winter as challenging as we've had, this year getting material on a timely basis is always a challenge," says Steve Tricarico of the Town of Brookhaven.

As soon as the salt comes in, it is going right back out. So many municipalities like the town of Brookhaven are mixing sand with salt just to make ends meet.

"We have enough material on the ground right now to make our roads safe, and to make sure that folks can drive on them, but we are living storm to storm," adds Tricarico.

Residents of Brookhaven are not the only ones - the town of Oyster Bay is in the same boat.

"We've added sand to out mix. I would prefer it to be a little more salt than sand, but you have to put material out," says Kevin Hanifan.

Atlantic Salt on Staten Island is the state contracted supplier of salt for all of the boroughs, all of Long Island, Westchester and Rockland Counties. A spokesperson for the company tells Eyewitness News they're working at capacity to get salt to their contracted outlets.

They say it's been a challenging winter with all the back-to-back storms, and it hasn't been easy to keep up with, but they're doing the best they can. They say the fact storms have been coming so frequently with two days in between them, and four days tops, you can't get materials in as fast as you are using them.

In order to keep up with demand, Atlantic Salt has been asking many towns to take deliveries on nights and weekends. That, of course, is getting expensive.

"The overtime associated with staying open to take delivery from the salt company has been expensive to the town," says Tricarico.