SYDNEY, N.S. — There’s nothing like a major snowfall to transform a community into a winter wonderland.
And while school children enjoyed a day free of classes and international students delighted in a picture-postcard snowscape foreign to their sun-soaked upbringing, the financial costs of the snow added up with each additional snowflake.
Schools were closed across the Cape Breton Regional Municipality prior to the arrival of the snow that started falling around 8 a.m. on Wednesday. And with forecasts calling for up to 30 cm, businesses and services closed early across the municipality.
Clearing the snow off roads and sidewalks is also an expensive endeavour.
According to CBRM public works senior manager Ray Boudreau, the municipality spends about $2.5 million annually on snow plowing and salting.
“It’s not our total winter operations budget, but it does cover the three key components that we track – it looks at how much we spend on our own forces for outside-of-regular hours work, how much we spend on contracted services and how much we spend on salt,” said Boudreau.
“Prior to this week’s storms we had 90 per cent of that budget remaining. That number will be lower now as we estimate that it costs us about seven or eight per cent of budget per storm. But those numbers are where we expect them to be and should be on par for the rest of the season.”
He also explained how the municipality priorities its snow clearing endeavours.
“The first major task is to plow and de-ice streets, then we shift our resources to sidewalks, then we move on to clearing snow from hydrants, cache basins and anywhere snow builds up so that it creates visibility or traffic issues,” said Boudreau.
“And when all that is complete and accumulation warrants it, we will sometimes truck snow away from downtown business districts.”
Boudreau said that as a rule of thumb all roads within the limits of the CBRM’s seven former urban entities are the responsibility of the municipality, while the roads of the former County of Cape Breton are taken care of by the provincial Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal. However, he says the two administrations do swap certain routes when it is deemed to be more efficient.
CBRM's winter operations fleet
- 24 loader plows
- 7 graders
- 16 salt trucks
- 20 sidewalk plows
*Municipality also uses contracted equipment and services
And, in an ironically timely fashion, Boudreau appeared before CBRM council’s general committee on Tuesday when he gave an update on the municipality’s winter operations.
Following his presentation, a lengthy debate ensued with councillors taking turns mentioning plowing concerns within their respective districts. At the end of the debate, council agreed to put the issue of plowing priorities on a future agenda.
And, after some councillors questioned whether the municipality is getting its fair share of highway maintenance dollars, the council opted to write a letter to Nova Scotia Transportation Minister Lloyd Hines asking how the province determines its road maintenance budget for the CBRM.
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