A steady procession of snowstorms during the month of February has hammered central Maine — the next big one is forecast to arrive Sunday — and has kept public works crews hopping and overtime budgets bulging.

However, directors of those highway departments say that despite the seemingly unending series of storms, their departments are just about where they should be this time of year in terms of winter road budgets and supplies.

“Overtime is at 100 percent right now,” said Mark Turner, Waterville’s public works director, “but our equipment has held up well. We’ve had a few minor problems with equipment. Manpower hours have held up. Three people were out last week with the flu.”

With several of the storms occurring on weekends and holidays, the overtime budget was depleted faster than usual. The Waterville crew had to remove snow from downtown and parking lots on Thanksgiving night in 2014 to clear the way for the Parade of Lights the next evening, according to Turner.

But getting a lot of snow instead of ice has its benefits. Last winter, Waterville had a lot of ice storms with rain, sleet and freezing rain, and the department ran out of sand in January, according to Turner.

“This year, we still have 25 to 30 percent of sand and salt supplies,” he said. “In some respects, we’re better off than we were last year.”

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A crew of 13 workers with 13 trucks plow 354 roads — about 90 miles of roads, Turner said. They also do 20 to 25 miles of sidewalks, city schoolyards, municipal parking lots, The Concourse and Educare Central Maine, and this year they added Robert LaFleur Airport, because an airport employee is out, according to Turner.

The city also still has plenty of space to dump snow at its designated site off College Avenue behind the railroad yard, he said.

In Skowhegan, Public Works Director Greg Dore has a similar crew of 13 men, 13 trucks and about 92 miles of roads to plow.

“The overtime is higher than what I should be at right now,” Dore said Thursday. “We’re not in too bad a shape. When you get long storms like we had a couple of weeks ago, you just rack up the OT. We only budget 200 hours for the whole crew. When you’re up to 70 or 80 hours in two weeks, it makes a pretty good dent in it.”

As of Thursday, the Skowhegan crew had plowed the town 25 times, which could include three or four plowings in a single storm, according to Dore.

“That’s about a year’s worth,” he said.

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A problem Dore is facing this year is that companies that supply salt are having difficulty keeping up with the demand, he said.

“I’m almost out, and they can’t give me anything till Monday, but Monday is a holiday,” he said, referring to President’s Day. He added that the town has enough for the weekend.

Skowhegan’s snow dumps are off Stewart Hill Road and Pine Street, as well as at the end of Meadowview Road, where there is still plenty of space, he said.

Oakland Public Works Director Jeffrey Hall said his process is a bit different from those in Waterville and Skowhegan, as eight workers with eight vehicles plow about 60 miles in his town. Also, overtime hours in Oakland have been used mostly during the week, while the larger communities regularly plow on weekends.

Oakland has used about 72 percent of its salt and sand supply, which isn’t bad, according to Hall,

Frigid days, with the temperature well below freezing, means there isn’t as much thawing and re-freezing that necessitates another covering of salt and sand.

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“My opinion is, where it’s been so cold, you don’t have to use so much,” he said.

Hall notes that Mother Nature is the only one who knows how much snow, rain or sleet will fall in a winter, so it’s difficult to know how much material such as sand and salt is needed or whether more will have to be ordered during any given season.

“We’ll just take it as it comes,” he said.

Amy Calder — 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @AmyCalder17


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