We hope this is the last we have to hear about a road salt shortage as temperatures stay largely above freezing into mid-March according to most forecasts.

It’s a nice respite from what has been a cold, slick winter.

At the same time we hope state policy makers have learned a lesson from the mess that was the Great Road Salt Shortage of 2024-25. The main producer of rock salt in New York state, American Rock Salt, struggled to keep up with demand despite its best efforts. The company had crews working weekends and holidays trying to fill orders as best it could. What happened this year is the perfect storm of frigid weather, stubborn snowstorms and, it turns out, a little-discussed state law that helped limit the supply of road salt.

We can’t control the weather. We can control how we deal with it.

This was the first bad winter under the New York State Buy American Salt Act, which limited municipal salt purchases to salt mined or harvested in the United States. Of course if makes more sense to purchase the salt from providers as close to Chautauqua County as possible, which leads local governments to American Rock Salt in Livingston County. The winter of 2023 was a mild one, so American Rock Salt had no trouble meeting the demand. This winter was another story.

Democrats in state government are pitching a fit about President Donald Trump’s protectionist economic policy. Of course, they aren’t going to say a peep about how their 2022 requirement to buy American rock salt helped keep your roads a mess at times this winter when salt supplies disappeared. But the Buy American Salt Act was every bit as protectionist as Trump’s tariffs – it aimed to drive business to a state company at the expense of foreign providers. In this case, it was Egyptian salt that state lawmakers said was often harvested in a way that is inhumane. Either way, the state played with the free market and lost.

Assemblyman Patrick Chludzinski, R-Cheektowaga, has introduced legislation (A.5890) to amend state law to allow for the purchase of rock salt or sodium chloride that is mined or harvested in Canada. Democrats should admit their mistake and pass Chludzinski’s bill so that local municipalities have more options for rock salt the next time we get a good, old-fashioned Western New York winter.