Wisconsin DOT Uses Cheese Brine for Snow Removal
It wouldn’t be a Wisconsin winter without a little snow, and with snow comes snow removal. Wisconsin county highway departments have plowed and provided ice control on all state highways and the interstate system for over 85 years. To meet service goals, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) contracts with the state’s 72 counties and supports them through workforce training, research and testing of new products and methods. One of those methods capitalizes on the state’s best-known asset—cheese.
Knowing that Wisconsin’s cheese factories use brine water for their production processes, the DOT explored how that brine water could be used as an anti-icing agent. Showing no environmental impact during testing, the cheese brine has proven to be a great solution for fighting snow in colder temperatures and is a less expensive replacement for the magnesium chloride typically used. It doesn’t get more “Wisconsin” than using cheese brine for snow removal!
