AUBURN – A new sand and salt shed should triple the city’s stock of snow-melting supplies this winter.

Crews have finished building the new shed in place of the city’s old lean-to on the Mount Auburn Avenue side of the Public Works building. Assistant Public Works Director Sid Hazelton said he hopes to have the shed filled with salt and salt-sand mix in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, city workers are building a retaining wall along Mount Auburn Avenue and doing some landscaping, Hazelton said.

“As soon as we get the road shaped up and paved, I hope we can start getting some deliveries in there,” he said.

The old shed held about 300 cubic yards of salt in a 50-foot by 30-foot enclosure. The new shed measures 60 by 70 feet and is much taller. The interior is divided into two compartments, one for road salt and another for mixed sand and salt.

“With the old shed, we only really got through one big storm before we needed another delivery,” Hazelton said. “If we had back-to-back ice storms, we could easily have run out of salt. Then, we would have been at the mercy of our deliveries.”

The city uses about 4,000 tons of salt to clear roads each winter, Hazelton said. “We should only need five or six deliveries to get through now.”

The new shed cost $198,000, he said, paid for over several fiscal years.

“Part of it was paid for in last year’s budget and we actually needed parts of three different bonds to fund it,” he said.

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