Those who woke up early Thursday could have noticed city crews working on Fourth Street as well as on 13th Avenue. However, by 9 a.m. the speed limits and road works signs were gone, as the workers moved over to secondary roads, residential or schools zones.
Norm Mack, the manager of roads and drainage for the City of Estevan’s public works division, explained what the crews are working on.
“We have two painting crews out and it’s a summer-long project. We’ve already painted our lane lines last week, now we start with our pedestrian crosswalks, and we will continue with directional arrows and other things all summer long,” said Mack.
Crews start early mornings on the Estevan main arteries before the heavy traffic flow. And just before 8 a.m., they try to move over to less busy roads.
“Early morning if you are out on our main arteries they will be out, so slow down for them. And they could be on any of our main arteries, it’s hard to predict where they are,” said Mack.
However, it’s easy to see the workers as they always have highly visible signs informing citizens about ongoing road works, which take place Monday through Friday mostly from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Other city crews can also be spotted throughout Estevan working on pavement and sidewalks.
“We do our own in house patching of excavation sites paving. They are working throughout the city repairing water break holes, sewer digs that we’ve done in the last year… And also we have our concrete works going on with sidewalk repairs,” said Mack.
They are currently working on a capital project on Souris Avenue North and Wellock Road.
“We are installing the sidewalk all along the highway near the valley… That’s going to be a 30 kilometre an hour zone for a couple of weeks on Souris North,” said Mack.
The city is also wrapping up the operation Clean Sweep this weekend, which once again was well received and supported by the community.
“We had some 4H Clubs and Rotary (International) participate. And we had other private individuals and other service clubs participate too. It went over well and it picks up a lot of garbage. You would be amazed how many truckloads we hauled to our landfill from the ditches.”
