Duane Hicks
At long last, the Town of Fort Frances has a sand and salt storage building at its Public Works yard.
The $500,000 structure, built by Van Pelt Construction Inc., is nearly complete and will be ready to use far in advance of this winter.
Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown, who has lobbied for a sand and salt storage building in the budget every year for the past 12 years, said the building is much-needed.
“It’s long overdue for a community this size,” he remarked.
“We put people on the moon in 1969 and we are getting a sand shed in 2015.
“We’ve been here for 112 years,” added Brown. “Most communities have one.
“Even Marathon had a salt shed.”
Until now, the town has had to store its winter control materials outside.
“In the old system, we used to put ‘sweetened sand’ [a mix of salt and sand] outside,” noted Brown.
“We couldn’t store straight salt outside.
“We did store some salt but it was under a tarp so I had guys moving tarps,” he added.
“With all the elements, the rain and the snow, the salt gets washed out of [‘the sweetened sand’], so the sand freezes and you get a bunch of chunks before you load up onto the sander,” Brown explained.
“Now you won’t have that because everything will be out of the elements,” he said.
“We can store more straight salt inside the building where it won’t wash into the ground.”
Brown said the sand and salt storage shed will be loaded up with straight salt, as well as “sweetened sand,” well before freeze-up.
“Say we have a severe ice storm,” he remarked. “We’ll be able to get salt on our own instead of going through MTO when everyone wants the salt.”
The large structure measures 85 feet in diameter and is 37 feet high.
It has a storage capacity of nearly 6,000 tonnes—which is twice the amount of sand and salt the town normally uses in a year.
It is built to last at least 50 years, and has been designed withstand rain, snow, and high winds, noted Brown.
There is a five-warranty on the building.
It is built of structural steel, nearly all of which is enclosed with wood to prevent rusting.
The lower half of the structure is an eight-foot concrete wall so if a loader bangs into it, it’s not going to damage it, Brown added.
It also is epoxy-sealed so the salt can’t corrode the steel structure.
The town paid the contractor $404,582.50 to have the structure built but the town is doing another $100,000 in work itself, including putting in the foundation, removing and installing fencing, landscaping, and paving.
The structure was deemed “substantially complete” as of Friday, meaning the contractor has done its part.
The town now has to put down the final lift of asphalt for the floor of the structure, as well as install lights inside it.
A fence also has to be put up around the structure and landscaping done around the perimeter so water runs away from it.
