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City of Nanaimo shifting its winter snow-clearing strategies

Nanaimo public works and parks staff preparing for ‘more intense’ winter weather
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Motorists ply their way along a snow-packed intersection where Comox and Bowen roads and Wall and Machleary street meet last winter. City of Nanaimo staff outlined this year’s winter weather preparations at a council meeting last week. (News Bulletin file)

If Old Man Winter picks Nanaimo for another punishing snow event, the city might find itself a bit better prepared to deal with the aftermath.

David Thompson, city manager of roads and traffic services, and Charlotte Davis, parks operations manager, made a presentation to council last week on preparations for winter weather.

The city faced numerous complaints about delays in clearing Nanaimo’s main and side streets following a series of snowfalls the last week of December last year. Parts of the city saw as much as 130 centimetres of snow, which bonded to pavement as thick hard layers of compacted snow and ice that that city snowplows were incapable of clearing down to bare pavement. In some areas backhoe loaders were needed to scrape pavement clean. The conditions were typical of winter in the B.C. Interior, but rare for the Island.

READ ALSO: Public turns up heat over City of Nanaimo’s performance in December snow storms

“We were out pre-treating [roads] on the basis that it was going to be below zero [Celsius], but we got rain and then the temperature dropped and we got absolutely hammered with snowfall,” Thompson told council Nov. 21.

He said efforts to keep priority routes for emergency services and public transit took a toll on city staff members who worked around the clock to try and keep ahead of snow accumulations. Thompson pointed out some of the impacts on staff working through prolonged snow events.

“The meteorologists and climatologists are telling us to expect long, more intense events and I think after last year that’s proving to be true,” he said. “One of the things that we need to watch out for and becomes a real challenge with these longer events is staff burnout when we’re running two shifts, 24 hours a day, after a few days everybody’s starting to get pretty tired. Certainly, I can speak to my team. Last year after two weeks, they were exhausted.”

He said many staff didn’t get their Christmas holidays until mid January and the unrelenting conditions also curtailed opportunities to maintain equipment. He said about 40 staff per shift are needed to tackle road clearing and, so far this year, the city has trained 71 people on snow-clearing equipment.

There is also more competition among municipalities for supplies such as brine and salt during extreme winter weather events, so public works has increased its contract for salt and the supplier has agreed to hold a reserve for Nanaimo, even though public works has “limited, but sufficient” salt storage capacity.

In 2021 and 2022 the city had a combined snow clearing budget for public works and parks operations of $880,000, but in the 2021 snow season the city spent $1.45 million and in 2022 has already spent $645,000 on removing snow early in the year.

“I would point out that it’s almost impossible to budget for a snow season,” Thompson said. “From my perspective this is all risk money … We’re going to spend whatever it takes to keep the city moving and moving safely.”

Davis said the costs for hiring outside help for snow clearing have increased due to rising insurance costs.

“Last year we weren’t actually able to secure a contractor for snow and ice removal … [We] were able to handle that in house and we learned a lot by doing that, so we have reduced our reliance on a contractor … We have secured a service for this year, although the hourly rate is three times what we’ve paid in previous years,” Davis said.

Public works plans to change the equipment it applies to snow removal and is looking at bringing different technology to bear on the problem.

“We also will use heavy equipment more readily to access difficult areas, instead of snow plows … One of the things we’ve also been looking at is weather stations to give us actual, on the ground, visual conditions, monitoring at key locations around the city ” Thompson said. “We’ve looked at three locations so far, and we think that project might cost about $75,000 to implement. It’s not yet budgeted, but it is a discussion we’d like to have as 2023 rolls along.”

READ ALSO: Special weather statement in effect with snow expected on the Island this week



chris.bush@nanaimobulletin.com

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Chris Bush

About the Author: Chris Bush

As a photographer/reporter with the Nanaimo News Bulletin since 1998.
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