(Spirit Lake)– With more snow in the forecast comes an important announcement from the Dickinson County Secondary Roads Department: it is illegal to push snow across roads and onto county right-of-way. Assistant Dickinson County Engineer Cole Budach addressed the matter at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting…
“Iowa Code chapter 318 talks about obstructions in the right-of-way. So that, in this one, you know, the placement of trash, litter, debris, waste material, manure, rocks, crops, crop residue, brush, vehicles, machinery, or other items within the highway right-of-way is considered an obstruction, so you can either consider snow probably waste material or your other items. And then it also gives us the, you know, the county, and the secondary roads, the authority to go and move that obstruction and also to assess the cost for removal of such obstructions within the right-of-way, and then, I guess, if it continues to be an insistent problem, there’s, it also gives the ability to bring civil or even criminal charges.”
Budach says they don’t want to have to take things to that level though…
“I think what we really want to do here to start out with is to make a public service announcement for those of the public that aren’t aware that they’re breaking the law and violating the county ordinance that they can not push snow from their private drives across the road and leave it in the county right-of-way. You’re supposed to be keeping that snow within your own property.”
Budach says the problem has been getting worse and is causing issues for county road crews.
