ESTEVAN - The first major snowfall of the 2021-22 season saw the city crews fully geared up and ready, and the subsequent smaller snow events allowed for a bit more action.
Roads and drainage manager with the City of Estevan Norm Mack said the city crews were able to handle the snow that covered Estevan last Tuesday on their own, without any help from contractors. However, the Dec. 26-27 snowfall wasn't as easy and required a joined effort from many locals.
"This one here was a foot or more. We hired contractors to help us out. We hired three graders, we hired probably a dozen trucks or more, tandem trucks, semis that help us haul snow. We were pretty busy, we worked through some of the holidays after Christmas, Boxing Day to get it done," Mack said.
It took city crews and contractors about five days to clean the whole city. The snow was graded, piled in the middle and then blown into trucks and hauled away. The snow piles accumulated during the big Boxing Day blizzard were being cleaned up and hauled from parking lots at the end of last week, which was a final step of this operation.
There are five designated locations around the city for crews to haul snow to.
"It costs money to haul so we want close hauls so it's not costing us more," Mack explained.
While the joint effort went smooth, Mack pointed out that working through windchills at -40 C and lower was stressful as frigid cold weather might affect the equipment.
"Our equipment worked well, just a few minor glitches, but our mechanics were on standby all the time and repairing things on the go. So we didn't have any major breakdowns even though it was so cold," Mack said.
He added that all equipment is stored in heated shops, which takes away the risk of it not starting in cold weather, but when the city crews work on the streets during extremely cold days, sometimes they run into hydraulic problems.
While the big storm resulted in some bigger expenditures, Mack said it is covered under the 2021 budget and they should have enough funds, as the previous year didn't have too much precipitation.
Any further snow removal efforts are going into the 2022 budget.
"Now in January, this is the new year 2022, so we'll be starting over again. Actually, we sort of get two winters with our fiscal year: you get January, February, March, April. And then you have October, November, December," Mack explained.
And while the city always tries to work within the budget, when it comes to natural phenomena, there is not much that can be done outside of optimization of the process.
"When it comes to budgets, if you get a storm, there's not much you can do, you have to clean it up and try to do it as efficient as you can, as cheap as you can and as fast as you can. But there's not much choice, if you're faced with a lot of snow sometimes you go over budget," Mack noted.
After major snowfalls, the city follows a set plan to ensure the traffic can keep flowing through the city.
"Our first goal is to do priority 1s and that's all your main streets within the city. That includes Fourth Street, 13th Avenue, Souris North, King Street, Kensington, that's all ones. We treat the hospital’s Nicholson Road (as priority 1) and make sure it's always open for emergencies. We make sure that the fire department's lot is cleaned so they can get out, same as police. We do one, and then twos are our collector streets. Twos are major roads in residential, we do them second. And then threes are just residential streets, the normal streets, we do them last," Mack outlined.
He also noted that while there is a general plan, they roll out their efforts differently, depending on the wind direction and other uncontrollable circumstances. For example, sometimes some areas get more plugged because of the wind, and they need to be cleaned first.
To melt the snow on the pavement, city crews use liquid magnesium mixed with molasses during milder temperatures, and sand mixed with salt on -30-40 C days.
Mack pointed out that with blowing snow, they are also busy knocking drifts down and grading roads to ensure public safety.
He also thanked the community for helping the city with snow removal during major storms.
"Not only do the city crews do the snow removal and the cleanup, but it's also the help from the local contractors that drop their jobs just to help us out. So, we would like to thank our local contractors," Mack said.
