Oxford County digging out from snowfall not seen in years

Lee Griffi, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The most consistent volatile winter weather we have seen in years led to most of us staying home all weekend and early into this week. At the same time, it meant long hours for area municipal staff who were plowing streets and roadways despite not being able to keep up at times.

While Woodstock and Ingersoll did not declare Significant Weather Events like the rural townships in Oxford, staff were working hard to keep up with dozens of centimetres of snow over a short period.

Alex Laros is Acting Director of Public Works in Woodstock and said this is the most snow he has seen in 20 years in the public works business. He added it was a challenge for the city to keep up.

“For my guys, the two biggest conflicts they ran into were parked cars in their way and getting close to their hours of service. They can only operate the heavy equipment for 70 hours in a full week then they need to take time off.”

There are always complaints when we have such large snow events that pile up the snow for several days at a time. Laros explained he was extremely pleased with how the city dealt with it.

“Our snowplow drivers are also the sidewalk clearing staff who are also our garbage guys for an extra day since we had to pick up Monday’s garbage on Tuesday. Our staff had to have that event cleared up by Tuesday morning so we could then flip over to waste collectors and get garbage off the streets.”

Laros said he thanked his team several times in recent days for their efforts and he added people forget city staff have families just like everyone else.

“They’ll be in a truck for a 14-hour shift and they go home and spend two to three hours clearing out their own driveway”

Woodstock does require homeowners to remove snow on city sidewalks in front of their properties and the expectation is for people to at least make an effort to do so.

“I know it’s a never-ending battle of us pushing back to the curb but ultimately we need to clear the catch basins so once it warms up and the snow starts melting the water has somewhere to go and doesn’t flood the streets which then poses a hazard if it freezes,” he explained.

Laros added the city would look at by-law measures only in extreme circumstances.

“If it’s a case where the snow is just too much and the resident shovelled but the plow came back and filled it in again, that’s a spot where we realize someone tried. What we are doing now is removing snowbanks on the congested roads so residents can be ready for the next snow event.”

Rich Fleming is Ingersoll’s public works boss and said the ten staff members of his team also ran into the same issue Woodstock did with hours of service limitations. He added once the main roads are cleared, they will head into subdivisions.

“We didn’t get a lot of complaints, maybe 10 emails and phone calls. The team did a great job of keeping up. We had to use the snowblowers on the sidewalks which is time-consuming so some of the sidewalks took two days.”

The Town of Ingersoll takes care of snow and ice on its sidewalks once six centimetres have fallen. Staff will then spring into action on weekends to clear them. Unlike Woodstock, there is no by-law for residents to clear their own sidewalks.

Fleming said the town has used a good chunk of the snow removal budget but as long as the fall is light in terms of snowfall, they should stay in the black.

“I know we aren’t over it yet but it has to go into the fall. Hopefully, we don’t get much snow and we should be ok.”

Another challenge for area municipalities of late is a shortage of salt for the roads. Fleming is hoping a shipment will be coming soon.

“We have been told we are in line to get an order and they are pulling it out of the mine (in Goderich) now. We are trying to use what we have left sparingly which we always do. You never know when you are going to run out.”

He added the town could lay a mix of salt and sand or straight sand but that creates more work with street cleaning in the spring.

Oxford County declared a Significant Weather Event Monday at 1:30 p.m. Frank Gross is the County’s Manager of Transportation and said it was a tough few days for county staff.

“The crews worked hard all weekend and have been working hard for most of the winter. Just based on the conditions in the rural areas with the high winds it was a losing battle as they made a path through an area that quickly drifted in behind them. It was a challenge for them to keep up in those conditions.”

Gross added the lower-tier municipalities, including East Zorra-Tavistock, also made declarations and were focusing on their busiest roads which meant they weren’t able to get to some of the lower volume roads.