You recently published a very interesting story about pretreating roads with brine as a replacement for salt and sand (“Many Maine towns pass on brine, keep salting roads,” Feb. 17).

One of the story lines was about how much better brine is and how the Maine Department of Transportation is trying to encourage municipalities to switch to brine but meeting resistance from local public works departments.

A day after the story ran, I passed two MDOT plow trucks on Interstate 295 between Portland and Yarmouth. Both trucks were spewing what appeared to be salt from spreaders onto the road. I found it somewhat ironic that the MDOT is promoting local use of brine but apparently still using salt on I-295.

Maybe you should do a follow-up story on MDOT practices with respect to using brine on state-maintained roads.

Mark Eyerman
Freeport