Harlin Redding didn’t take his father’s advice, and now he’s paying for it.

Redding, who lives two miles west of the South Lawrence Trafficway in Clinton Lake Estates, pays $252.74 a year to have the gravel road outside his house treated with magnesium chloride.

Without the salt solution applied twice a year, he said, Redding’s wife still would be dusting off all the furniture and everything else inside their home that otherwise is protected by earthen berms and walls six inches thick.

“My dad told me years ago, ‘Don’t buy on the north side of the road,’ because in the summertime the dust just rolls across the road,” Redding said. “Back then, it was only one car a day, but it was still bad. ‘The dust just rolls. Don’t buy on the north side of the road.’ That’s what he told me.

“I guess I forgot.”

Redding is among the more than 150 people who take advantage of Douglas County’s annual program for treating gravel roads with magnesium chloride, a.k.a. “dust palliative.”

Each participating property owner pays the county a flat $45 fee, plus 75 cents for each linear foot of road to be treated. The county then assembles all of the locations into a single package for contractors to bid on.

The result: Prices two or three times lower than what it would cost to hire a crew to handle an isolated job, said Doug Stephens, who administers the county’s program.

And people are starting to notice.

“We had probably 10 applications 10 years ago,” Stephens said. “We have 165 to 170 now. If you live next to a gravel road, you really appreciate it.”

Two factors are driving the program’s popularity, said Keith Browning, the county’s director of public works: the increase in the number of homes being built and occupied in rural areas, and the resulting increase in the number of vehicles using rural roads.

County officials preparing for dusty summer

“Before, if you lived on a gravel road, you might see two cars a day,” Browning said. “Now you might see 200, and that makes a big difference on how much dust you’re getting.”

Hired crews apply the dust-binding palliative twice a year. This year’s applications are scheduled for May 4-14 and June 22-30.

The county’s Public Works Department is accepting applications through 5 p.m. March 5 at the department’s offices, 1242 Mass.

While the county can’t guarantee the palliative’s effectiveness, Browning said, the treatment remains a worthwhile investment.

“It cuts down on the dust significantly, and typically it lasts for the whole dust season,” Browning said.

Redding’s already looking forward to this year’s applications — his only line of defense against the dusty south winds.

“Before, my wife couldn’t dust enough,” Redding said. “There was dust all over the furniture. Everywhere you’d do something, there was dust all over it. You couldn’t keep the dust off anything.”

Now that Redding can smile again without risking a mouthful of dust, the retired environmentalist for DuPont said he would recommend the program to anyone in his shoes — whether they live on the north side of a road or not.

“It’s a lot better,” he said. “If you can’t do anything else, do this.”