A new salt bin in South Zanesville saves road salt and the Moxahala Creek

SOUTH ZANESVILLE, Ohio – The village of South Zanesville celebrated the completion of a new salt bin on Tuesday. The original salt bin had wooden walls that were in poor condition and a dirt floor that allowed the road salt to leach into the soil and contaminating the nearby Moxahala Creek.

“The state had a grant program that helped improve things like that and reduce runoff and pollution and we were able to get a $75,000 grant from the Ohio H2O fund to help pay for this new structure. Which is environmentally so much better and will reduce the villages salt usage by about 60 tons a year that won’t be on the roads with cars and contaminating the river. ”

The village of South Zanesville also paid an additional $45,000 in addition to the grant from the H2Ohio Rivers Initiative grant that paid for the new salt bin with concrete walls and floors to prevent ground leaching of road salt. According to Village Planner Rob Guentter, the salt bin is money well spent in the long run.

“I think these kinds of projects are important for small communities to both save tax payer money because we’re going to be using salt less and a little more sand. So we save a lot of money that way and it’s environmentally the right thing to do, to reduce run off into our streams and rivers.”

The new salt bin is located on the east side of Maysville Pike and was constructed by Gingerich Construction.