Liberal Idiocy

Seattle, Washington has had a major snowstorm and they plow their streets with rubber edged plows and refuse to use salt because salt might pollute salt water Puget Sound. As a result they have created ice encrusted roadways that even emergency vehicles have trouble traversing with chains, pure stupidity but thats environitwits for ya. From the Seattle Times

To hear the city's spin, Seattle's road crews are making "great progress" in clearing the ice-caked streets.

But it turns out "plowed streets" in Seattle actually means "snow-packed," as in there's snow and ice left on major arterials by design.

"We're trying to create a hard-packed surface," said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. "It doesn't look like anything you'd find in Chicago or New York."

The city's approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains, Wiggins said.

The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.

As someone who routinely drives on packed snow in the Sierra knows it quickly turns to ice. My truck is a 4x4 with extreme weather rated tires and I still have to chain up, at least they use real plows to clear the roads.