WASILLA -- A new high-tech, anti-icing system installed this year on the Knik River Bridge was supposed to make driving safer for Glenn Highway motorists. So far it's not going so well.
As of last week, the system had been shut down, said Kurt Devon, state road maintenance superintendent for the Matanuska-Susitna area.
Almost since it was turned on in October, the system has repeatedly malfunctioned, he said. The system is supposed to prevent icing by using sensors to detect when the road is close to freezing and preemptively spray a de-icing fluid on it.
Instead it has regularly sprayed the expensive fluid when unwarranted, and the sensors have been wildly inaccurate at measuring weather conditions, Devon said. On Monday, for example, it was reporting a local air temperature of minus 102 degrees, he said.
"We are having problems," Devon said.
He said the cause of the problems were unclear. But so far fixing the system hasn't cost the state a dime since the $1.1 million system came with a three-year guarantee.
Still it's not clear yet who will pick up the tab for about 2,500 gallons, or about $4,000 worth of potassium acetate the system has sprayed, often mistakenly, on the road, he said.
Devon said the problems are mystifying especially since the system has proven itself in other cold climes including Canada and Minnesota. He said the company, Boschung America LLC, has been troubleshooting the problem and even planned to call in a specialist from Switzerland. In the meantime the state is back to its old method of dumping sand on the roadway, a system they were trying to get away from because of its limited effectiveness, he said.
