Snow is many things.
Annoying to some who can’t get to work and a good thing for kids who want a day off school, but to road crews and local governments, it means long hours and extra costs.
The crews in Snyder and Antis townships and Tyrone and Bellwood boroughs have been working since the first flakes of snow started hitting early Sunday morning.
“All of our roads are better than the state roads,” said Joe Mengel, Snyder Township road foreman. “We have salt on all the hills and turns. We have been pretty much out there since the storm started. We have put in 31 extra hours on the roads since Sunday.”
“Our roads are open and clear,” said Antis Township Supervisor Ray Amato. “We have had crews on 12 hour shifts – eight regular hours and four overtime hours, We’ve been giving our guys rest between shifts. The roads are cindered and salted and our crews were out at 4 a.m. today.”
“Our roads are always better than most places,” said Bellwood Borough secretary Susan Waite. “Our road crews have been working hard since the storm hit. Yesterday wasn’t a holiday for Bellwood borough and there wasn’t holiday overtime.”
The cost of snow removal has also hit the local municipalities.
“We’re looking at between $5,000 and $7,000 for this storm alone,” said Amato.
“So far this winter, we have spent 46 percent of our salt budget and 25 percent of our anti-skid budget,” said Snyder Township secretary Viola Dysart. “This storm cost the township $26,000 between salt, anti-skid cinders and overtime wages.”
Bellwood Borough reported the cost in wages for plowing and clearing the roads during this storm is just under $1,500.
Tyrone Borough didn’t respond to inquires placed by The Daily Herald.
Even before the storm dumped two feet of snow on Pennsylvania highways, the state was running over its snow-clearing budget by $7 million, said Rich Kirkpatrick, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
While Philadelphia had plenty of salt in reserve to combat wintery weather, supplies were tighter in the Pittsburgh, Scranton and Harrisburg regions, Kirkpatrick said. PENNDOT recently received an additional 80,000 tons of salt, and the state is likely to break its salt-use record of 1.1 million tons set during the 2000-01 winter.
“We’ve used over 700,000 tons across the state so far,” Kirkpatrick said. “It looks like we’re on track to break that record this year.”
Pennsylvania budgeted $163 million for winter services from the agency’s maintenance budget of $1 billion. Kirkpatrick said the winter services budget was running at around $170 million before the storm hit.
While state taxpayers won’t have to worry about footing the bill, PennDOT will likely have to tighten its belts later to compensate for the spending.
“We may not be able to do everything we wanted to do in spring maintenance. We can’t run a deficit,” Kirkpatrick said.
Editor’s Note: Associated Press Writer Judy Lin contributed to this story.
