Town boosts snow removal services

A recent revision to Turner Valley’s snow removal policy will see crews hauling snow off streets this winter rather than pushing it to the side.

“Our new policy is to look at dealing with the snow right from the get-go,” said Barry Williamson, the Town’s chief administrative officer. “It’s put in the middle (of the road) and removed from the middle so it’s completely taken away. It’s a much more effective and efficient way of doing your municipal streets.”

The Town currently contracts its snow removal services, but when costs rose due to an increase in snowfall in recent years the Town faced a $60,000 snow removal bill in 2013 and $35,000 already this year - with another five weeks of potential snow activity to go, said Williamson.

“Last year we had a significant bill with the number of snow events,” he said. “It was very costly for the Town and we said we have to find a way to do this better and that’s what led to this policy and buying of some of our own equipment.”

Council approved the purchase of a $335,475 2015 grader during its Nov. 17 regular council meeting to replace its 30-year-old grader and is in the process of purchasing a loader and snow blower, with an anticipated $375,000 price tag, so its own employees will have capacity to remove snow rather than just push it to the side.

Once the equipment is on the streets, Andy Pfeifer, the Town’s director of operations and engineering, expects snow removal costs to drop to $15,000 annually. He said labour costs for the Town’s employees to provide the service will be absorbed in the town’s usual operations.

“It’s going to be nice to be able to control our own destiny as to when and where we move our snow and how we supply that to our customers,” he said.

While most snow removal equipment will be Town-owned, Pfeifer said the Town will continue to lease or contract trucks to haul snow away.

“It’s not a good position for the town to be in to purchase 10 to 15 trucks to move a lot of snow when we can utilize the service of a local contractor,” he said.

Williamson said the Town operating its own snow removal services will eliminate the need to have the public works department clean up gravel and debris each spring that had been pushed on residential, business and town property.

More importantly, the equipment will be on the streets earlier.

“Sometimes the problem with renting or contracting is it’s not always timely to have that available to you,” he said. “You want to be able to move when you’re getting a major snow event. You are always trying to balance service delivery with availability, whereas if you have your own equipment you don’t have that extra challenge.”

Williamson said the snow will likely be stored at the old landfill site west of Turner Valley, providing it meets all the environmental requirements.

Once a site has been approved and the equipment is ready to go, possibly by January, Williamson said streets will be cleared following four to six inches of snowfall on a priority basis, with emergency and bus routes being the top priority.

Removal of snow from all streets in Turner Valley is expected to take five full days, as long as there isn’t another snow event requiring crews to start again on the priority routes.

“We will go through the priority areas, and if there’s time work our way into residential areas,” said Williamson.

Pfeifer said residential streets will be cleared on an as-needed basis.

“For our residential streets we are not going to send out a bunch of equipment using costly diesel fuel for four inches of snow,” he said. “When the snow hits that level when people are having a hard time moving from parking to driving lanes that’s the time we need to get out there and remove it. The town folk will have to be patient with that.”