Vernon mayor says township's salt sheds 'quite full'

VERNON — Super Bowl Sunday nachos are already being threatened by the shortage of Velveeta cheese, but what about the conditions of the local roads?

Since New Jersey is hosting the game this year at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, the Road Department has designated a bulk of the state’s salt supplies to roads surrounding the stadium in case of a snow storm that weekend, causing slower reactions to snowstorms in the township.

Recently the townshp was able to refill its salt supply, bettern enabling the town to clean up after winter storms.

“I’ve had several conversations with residents regarding the most recent storms and the manner in which our roads were not cleared in the way that we’ve become accustomed to,” Vernon Mayor Victor Marotta said.

Marotta continued to explain that Vernon Township “purchases our salt through the Sussex County Co-op on contract. However, the international company that supplies the salt to the co-op was unable to fulfill the materials we had ordered because the state had set aside a huge amount of salt in anticipation of the Super Bowl. So as we got to the second storm, we had ordered 2,000 tons of salt, none of which we got.”

The mayor also touched on an issue of a shortage in plow-trucks in addition to the shortage of materials needed to maintain the roads.

However, these problems have been fixed.

Local roads as well as those around MetLife stadium will be well-salted and plowed in the event of a winter storm. Marotta assured residents that the salt shed at the present time is “quite full” and we can return to the accustomed speedy manner of street-clearing that residents have come to appreciate.