(Spirit Lake)– Dickinson County Engineer Cole Budach is reminding the public of the protocol that’s used in plowing county roads. He says the highest traveled roads take first priority…
“Out of Milford we have two plows that go on A34 east to N14 and west to M27 to connect into those routes. Out of Terril we are running one plow that it’s first route priority would be N14 north to state highway 9 and south to the Clay county line. M27 would be our Lake Park priority route that goes from state highway 9 to the Clay county line as well as the additional plow out of Lake Park that is also running north on M27 up to the state line. And then out of Spirit Lake we’re running M56. A lot of times that is just based upon Spirit Lake having more rural routes. They’ll have plows in town running that, so a lot of times that will get hit first with a motor grader to get the snow off and then we’ll come in with one of the trucks to apply sand and salt mixture as needed on that road.”
He adds there could be some variations to that depending upon conditions…
“You know if we’re seeing that the north-south roads are just fine, but we’re seeing a lot of drifting on east-west roads, we may not be running N14 as consistently as we are A34 or A43 and A48.”
Budach also offers this reminder…
“State roads are going to be better because the D.O.T operations are running more consistently. In Dickinson county we’re really lucky to have a lot of state routes that connect our different communities really well. We have 71 that runs right through the corridor, we have 86 that goes around the outside the west edge of West Lake and then we have Highway 9 that goes across the northern part of the county. So we are really lucky that we have that and it serves as a great connection between our communities and also the adjacent communities in other counties like Spencer, Estherville, Sibley and Jackson.”
Budach also has this reminder when it comes to pushing snow…
“Pushing snow into or across the right-of-way whether it’s a state highway or county highway or city street is a violation of Iowa Code 318 and can result in a fine, especially if there’s egregious offenses, so.”
Budach adds county crews will go out after hours under certain emergency conditions…
“If there’s imminent loss of life or imminent loss of property, then we’ll call the secondary roads staff outside of, I guess, our typical operating hours which the ordinance defines from 7 to 5. We’ll come in an hour early and stay an hour late, just depending on the conditions, too.”
Budach says Dickinson county road crews started their operations at 6:00 am this (Tues.) morning.
