MILWAUKEE — In a state whose license plates
advertise it as America’s Dairyland, where lawmakers once honored the bacterium in Monterey Jack as the state’s
official microbe and where otherwise sober citizens wear
foam cheesehead hats, road crews are trying to thaw freezing Wisconsin streets
with a material that smells a little like mozzarella.
This month, Milwaukee
began a pilot program to repurpose cheese brine for use in keeping city roads
from freezing, mixing the dairy waste with traditional rock salt as a way to
trim costs and ease pollution.
“You want to use provolone or mozzarella,” said Jeffrey A.
Tews, the fleet operations manager for the public works department, which has
thrice spread the cheesy substance in Bay View, a neighborhood on Milwaukee ’s south side.
“Those have the best salt content. You have to do practically nothing to it.”
Local governments across the country have been experimenting
with cheaper and environmentally friendly ways of thawing icy thoroughfares,
trying everything from sugar beet juice to discarded brewery grain in an
attempt to limit the use of road salt, which can spread too thin, wash away and
pollute waterways.
Snow science experts say an attempt to recycle the salty
brine that flavors cheese was only a matter of time, particularly in a state
like Wisconsin .
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What will it smell like after the first really warm thaw?
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