Molasses, really?

On one of our first evening walks to the Surf Club (our most frequented dinner hang out just two blocks from our condo), we noticed that a long section of the gravel/dirt road was unusually dark. My first thought was, “Oh, they probably water it to keep the dust down.” But then I quickly realized that didn’t make any sense. Any water applied in this climate would quickly evaporate. Then I thought “Maybe it’s some kind of petroleum product…that would too bad.” Then, last week on a walk midday, we were approaching that same section of road and I noticed that the road was much darker than before and glistening in the sun. Obviously, something had just been freshly applied. As we started walking on that section, I noticed my flip flops were becoming a little tacky and then the occasional smell of slightly burnt molasses found my nose. “Wait…did they put molasses on the road?,” I thought. “That couldn’t be. That would require SO MUCH molasses. Wouldn’t that be prohibitively expensive? Hmm.” Then, as we approached the neighborhood mini super to get drinks, I noticed there was a path of broken down cardboard boxes on the way to the door and just inside the mini super. Those had not been there before. As I walked on the boxes, my shoes stuck to the cardboard. “I think this has got to be molasses. So strange. I bet Google knows.”

And sure enough, a quick internet search brought up several articles explaining that “a liquid mixture of water and molasses is splashed onto the roads, the coating dries and hardens in a matter of days into rust-colored “asphalt” that glues the dirt and rocks together. Molasses is water-soluble, so when the strong rains return, it washes away.” It turns out that is this is actually an eco-friendly solution to keeping the dust down because molasses is a by-product of the sugar cane production here. So interesting!