It`s unlikely that Chicago will ever be known as Margaritaville.
But if, by chance, Lake Michigan someday fills up with tequila, Chicago will be ready to coat its rim with salt, tons and tons of salt. And there`ll probably be tons left over.
While most city residents are still busying themselves with raking new- fallen leaves or carting grills and other remnants of summer to the garage, the people who run the city of Chicago already have their minds on the next season.
In this city, politicians are haunted by the notion that winter not only transforms the weather but also can upend an entire mayoral
administration.
It has only happened once, and 13 years ago at that-when then-Mayor Michael Bilandic failed to get the snow cleared and opened the door for Jane Byrne to get elected-but that was enough to set City Hall permanently on guard.
Moreover, meteorologists are ominously noting that our good fortune in having relatively hospitable winters for a decade and a half combined with certain climatic factors could mean this winter will be the one we`ve all been dreading.
So for the last week or so, on a city-owned lot at 16th and Clark Streets, huge trucks have been moving in from morning to night building new mountains of shiny, new rock salt next to the twin peaks of sodium that sat there all summer, leftovers from last year`s mild winter.
It`s one of a number of sites where Chicago is filling its salt shakers, getting ready to turn city streets into rivers of brine at the first, feared sight of flakes from above.
By the end of last week, the city had 204,000 tons of salt strategically placed at 18 city locations, ready to be distributed to the 50 ward offices when snow comes to town. Another 56,000 tons are on the way by barge, truck and other conveyances from salt companies across the country.
They should be in Chicago by Dec. 1, the official start of the snow season in the city, according to Terry Levin, a spokesman for the Department of Streets and Sanitation.
That should make a total of 260,000 tons of salt, more than enough to handle snowfalls similar to that of the last several years, he said.
By contrast, Bilandic had a paltry 85,000 tons on hand for New Year`s Eve 1978, when it started to snow and, seemingly, didn`t stop for two months, dropping about 7 feet of snow on the city.
Last year the city started the snow season with 226,000 tons of salt, and from December through March, 168,439 tons of salt were eventually strewn on city streets.
The reserves were bolstered by deliveries throughout the winter, and the city ended the season with about 90,000 tons in reserve. But Levin said it doesn`t go to waste. Although the chemicals used to coat the road salt to make it more effective in low temperatures do lose their strength over time, the city makes sure to use the leftover salt before tapping into the new supplies, Levin said.
When and if Chicago ever gets a real winter again, the city will have 280 salt-spreader trucks available to move out onto the streets, about 50 more than a few years back. In addition, the city`s 400 garbage trucks can be equipped with ”quick hitch” plows in minutes to augment the regular plows and salt-spreaders, Levin said.
After defeating Bilandic on the last day of February that fateful Winter of `79, Byrne spent millions of tax dollars buying new snow-fighting equipment, even though not one of her four winters in office recorded even close to the average of 40 inches of snow Chicago had seen in the past.
Harold Washington was just as snow-skittish, elevating his Streets and Sanitation Commissioner John Halpin to near-deity status every time it snowed, even though not one of Washington`s five years in office saw a total snowfall higher than average.
Eugene Sawyer`s one year in office saw only a 20-inch snowfall total, and Mayor Richard Daley has yet to go through a winter season with more than 25 inches of snow, a full 15 inches lower than an average Chicago winter.
Daley has been deliberately trying to downplay the seasonal threat, angrily pointing out that it always snows in winter and residents shouldn`t expect city workers to try to catch every snowflake before it hits the ground. Not that he hasn`t tried. In winters past, even the tentative forecast of an upcoming snowfall has sent armies of snowfighting machinery out onto the streets, parked with their truck motors idling, waiting for a snowstorm that didn`t come.
A few weeks ago, Daley replaced his first Streets and Sanitation commissioner, Raymond Cachares, with Eileen Carey, a personable if press-shy former head of his Department of Information and Inquiry, who to date has commented publicly only through her spokespeople.
Since her appointment, she has been making regular, unannounced visits to ward yards, checking out the equipment and preparing for her first winter in office.
”She`s taking a complete look at all of the city`s snow equipment and may change some things,” Levin said. ”We might revise some things, but she`s right in the middle of it right now.”
Levin said that although Carey is taking a holistic approach to the department, giving equal attention to other functions such as tree-trimming, garbage pickup and rodent control, ”She does consider snow removal an extremely important function of her department, although she is not giving it an overwhelming priority.”
Carey, whose previous job was handling the complaints and comments of the electorate, knows what makes people mad, and inadequate snow removal is one of the major gripes. A good Streets and Sanitation general can make a mayor; a bad one can break him.
Since 1979, hype and doomsaying have been inevitable at even the mention of a Chicago winter, particularly at the hands of breathless television reporters new to the city.
In reality, ”it`s been a good 15 years since we`ve really had a bad winter,” said Greg Soulje, a meteorologist for Central Weather Service. ”And it`s been at least 10 years since we`ve had a really bad winter storm at all.”
The comment ”Wait `til next year” that has been a recurring theme in Chicago sports has become a mantra for Chicago winter veterans who have emerged like groundhogs each spring to find that the city has escaped again.
But Soulje said that although longterm forecasts are risky, recent weather trends and the inevitability of history seem to indicate that in Chicago this winter will be ”colder and snowier” than in the immediate past. Levin said the city plans to once again implement its stringent ”No parking from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m.” restriction on 107.1 miles of the busiest streets in Chicago from Dec. 1 until April 1, no matter what the weather. And when snowfall exceeds or threatens to top 2 inches, the city will slap on its no-parking ban on another 610.3 miles of city streets, allowing plows to clear the snow without encountering parked cars.
And, to add the vital seasoning to the snow-fighting recipe, Chicago is packing in the salt.
When then-Mayor Bilandic entered the now-legendary Winter of `79, the 85,000 tons of salt the city had on hand had seemed adequate.
Now, with three times that amount piling up in city storage lots, Mayor Daley`s government is getting ready to face the season once again, prepared to liberally salt the city, eating out the soles of shoes and the bottoms of cars, but making the streets passable in the process.
The city may not be Margaritaville in 1992-93, but, Daley hopes, it also won`t be the Icy Stinger that Bilandic downed in 1979.
