Area Road Departments Say They’re Ready For Old Man Winter
Area Road Departments Say They’re Ready For Old Man Winter
December 08, 2021Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– Area road crews are getting ready for what likely will be the first major snowfall of the season. Dickinson County Engineer Dan Eckert says they’ve been using the recent mild weather to do just that…
“All of the equipment has been converted over. Dump trucks are converted to snow plows and motor graders have wings and v-plows and things like that on them, so I think the equipment is all ready to go. We’ve got a little over 100 tons of salt and we’ve ordered 400 for the season, so we should be ready to go.”
Eckert says there are several things motorists can do to help snow plow operators. He says allowing extra time and keeping your distance from plows are among them…
“Allow more time, you know, always. And you hear that all the time from law enforcement and I can just only reiterate that from the public works side of things is that the guys are just trying to do the best they can and obviously traffic is just a burden to everybody if they’re in a hurry, so like I said I always like to remind people to give as much time as possible if you have to travel and the weather is bad.”
Eckert adds the County Road Department is staffed with 17 maintenance workers. Of those, he says 16 are snow plow operators who are responsible for removing snow and ice from about 180 miles of paved roads and 540 miles of gravel roads in the county.
