Is this a new low point for Greenie stupidity?

Seattle is known as a place where the rain never stops, but lately it's been snowing, and the roads have been icy. On Friday the result, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported, was a near-disaster:

Two Northwestern Trailways buses slid down the snow-covered cobblestones of East Thomas on Capitol Hill and smashed into each other, careening through a guardrail on Melrose Avenue East, 20 to 30 feet above Interstate 5.

Fortunately, the buses did not fall onto the highway below. They "came to rest with their front ends hanging over I-5."
It turns out there's a reason Seattle's roads are so icy. Today's Seattle Times reports:

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 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. "If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."

Puget Sound is a saltwater estuary. That's right--Seattle officials are making their roads more dangerous because they're trying to keep salt out of the ocean.

Source (See the original for links)

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here