With nice weather coming to the Energy City earlier this year the City of Estevan crews were able to deploy the cleaning equipment as early as March 18.
Norm Mack, who is the manager of roads and drainage for the public works division, said that usually, spring operations don’t start before April.
“The past week was the nice weather and most of the main arteries are melted off, so we decided to deploy the sweepers early and get some of that winter debris off the road,” said Mack.
They’ve also had the steamer out for last couple of weeks. Mack noted that it’s been a relatively slow melt with not much moisture content in the snow. And as far as water being an issue, there was no serious problems associated with drainage.
“It’s a below normal runoff that I can see,” Mack said.
With the nice weather it really did a good melt on the streets. And this week, the city is hoping to start sweeping residential areas as well.
When the warm weather is completely settled down in Estevan and main cleaning operations are done, the city will proceed with further spring operations.
“We are going to wait till the frost gets out of the ground before some of our maintenance work, which is patching and crack filling. All that will be coming up depending on the weather, further in April,” Mack said.
He noted that there are not many potholes so far this year. And since it is freezing and melting water that creates most potholes the roads remain in decent shape after winter because the city clears off all snow, so streets dry up really quick.
The first part of the 2019 winter didn’t bring in too much precipitation, leaving the city snow-clearing budget in good shape. However, it still might be too early to judge.
“We had one storm early in February there … we did hire some contractors and we did spend some money, and snowstorms aren’t cheap. I think we are sitting in a pretty good shape … Of course, we still got winter this year in October, November, December, so we should be in shape for the three remaining months next fall. And you never know, we could have a ... snowstorm in April here that we may have to spend more money on,” said Mack.
Summer promises to be a busy time for the city crews, as they have a lot of work planned as far as sidewalk repairs and traffic lights.
And no matter what season it is, Mack reminded drivers to be cautious and follow the signs when coming across the operating equipment.
“A lot of our equipment has signage on the back to stay back so many metres. If you see some of our road maintenance equipment such as sweepers and loaders, and stuff, just stay back a little bit, give them some space and give them a little time, and they’ll be out of your way. Just remember to reduce your speed when you come up to road maintenance crews,” said Mack.
