By Holly Demaree
No one wants to think about plowing the streets for snow, but the Fishers Dept. of Public Works is already preparing for it. Forty to 75 seasonal snow plow drivers and five to 10 heavy equipment operators are used every year to help with the snow removal effort.
When the actual snow falls, DPW begins work on what has been decided are main thoroughfares, followed by secondary roads and then subdivisions.
“The main thoroughfares that we will typically hit first are connected to a main artery road: 116th Street, 126th, Hoosier Road and Cumberland Road,” said Sean O’Grady, assistant director of Public Works. “We will try and connect all those major intersections or entry and exit points and then work way our way deeper into the subdivisions. So, mainly the school bus routes, the entryways to the neighborhoods and the connector roads.”
Snow removal and salt application on the roads takes preparation and planning. Some neighborhoods and their homeowners associations hire private contractors for snow removal and it often causes problems on both sides of the snow removal work force.
“We would like to know which housing associations do have contracts with private contractors, so we do not have to duplicate efforts,” said O’Grady. “If they were to have a contract, we ask them to work opposite of us. Work in the cul-de-sac and work their way to the main thoroughfares. The duplication of efforts of them salting and then us plowing that off and then us salting and then them plowing it off. There are a lot of different factors going into it and we don’t want to overlap and waste resources.”
Fishers has 4,300 tons of salt and 5,000 gallons of calcium to begin the season and is in the process of building a brine (liquid deicing) machine. DPW has a backup plan if salt becomes scarce, as it did last winter.
“If we do get into a situation where salt is a hot commodity and hard to get, we will start mixing the calcium a little bit more,” said O’Grady. “We can use the brine and start sanding some areas by mixing salt and sand. There are a bunch of different processes we can go through to make sure the roads are safer to travel.”
For more information about the Fishers snow removal process and policy, go to http://www.fishers.in.us/index.aspx?NID=139.
