By Chad Feehan / Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Councillor Mark Rice took some time at Tuesday’s public council meeting to acknowledge complaints he’s been hearing about snow clearing in Mount Pearl.
Rice noted that a number of concerned citizens reached out to him over the Christmas break, wondering when their streets would be cleared of snow.
Rice took the opportunity at council to clarify the current snow clearing system as it stands.
“If we get anything under 25 cm of snow, the flyers are going to be out doing the main drags and the street,” Rice said, referring to dump trucks with blade attachments at the front and side. “The plows don’t come out until 12 o’clock in the night.”
Director of Public Works Glen Dollimont elaborated further.
“Based on our level of service right now within the city, anything under 25 cm of snow we’ll be in that area within four to six hours once the snow ends,” he said. “Any less than five cm we’ll handle it with our flyers. Anything five cm and above we will call out our full load fleet and put a loader on every one of our 14 routes to push and clean up the snow as required.”
Anything above 25 cm will get the same level of service but within a six to eight hour time frame.
“The residents think the plows should be out there 24/7 and that's not the case,” said Rice.
After Councillor Jim Locke requested further clarification on details of the snow clearing service, Dollimont explained that even though there is a loader for each of the 14 routes, a snowfall measuring under five cm is generally combated with any number of the City’s fleet of 10 flyers and a salting.
“Eight of those are tandem trucks with a blade on the front and the wing and two of those what we refer to as single axles with a blade on the front but they still do the same job as a tandem truck,” Dollimont said.
Locke then repeated his understanding of the policy to make sure he had understood it right.
“Under five you’re not going to see the same number of pieces of equipment on the street, so it will be a little bit longer before you see a flyer,” he said. “But over five cm we have a dedicated piece of equipment to each of the 14 routes, so you might see equipment a little sooner as opposed to when we we’re going around salting with our flyers. If you only had six units out, it’s going to take a little bit longer to traverse the entire 14 routes in the city.”
“I think you got it,” said Dollimont.
Mayor Dave Aker pointed out that five cm of snow may not look the same every time it falls, which can be affected by a number of environmental factors.
“There’s always a plan, and Director Dollimont, you’ve told me many times that sometimes the plan you end on is not the plan you started with,” observed the mayor.
Dollimont agreed, stating that five cm of snow with 100 kilometer per hour winds is a totally different monster than if no winds are present.
“It’s an orchestra, I guess, at times,” he said. “Every snow event is different.”
Residents looking for more information can find the City’s snow plow trackers on its website, which interactively displays the current and past movement of municipal vehicles throughout the city.
