The town of Fort Fairfield is going to do an experiment reducing the use of sand in some of its winter road treatment, with the hopes of testing a concept and saving money in the long-term.
With average annual snowfall of more than 8 feet, winter road maintenance is a major government service in northern Maine. Fort Fairfield’s Public Works Department spends $400,000 every year on snow removal — more than $100 per resident per year — on the 86 road miles the town is responsible for.
The use of sand has long been a mainstay of winter road treatment, but comes with costs for cleanup in the spring and also leads to dust. People aerating sand from lawns and ditches, and creating dust in the process, is a common sight in spring.
“When we lay down sand, which is mixed with some salt for added melting, we are creating more work for crews in the spring when it comes time to clean up the streets after the snow melts,” said Public Works Director Darren Hanson in a media release.
“What we are going to experiment with this year is using only salt after a few storms to see if that not only improves traction for vehicles, but to see if it also reduces the amount of time and money we spend cleaning up the tons of sand we treat the roads with during the course of the season.”
The experimental move will be limited to 11 miles of “in-town” roads plowed by the town, those posted at 25 miles per hour in and around downtown.
Instead of laying down salt and sand after every snowstorm, those in-town roads will be treated with salt only after the first snowstorm of December, January and February. Rural roads maintained by the town will continue using the regular sand/salt mixture and all of the town maintained roads will have the sand/salt mixture following second, third and other storms in a given month.
But town officials hope curbing the use of sand in and around downtown will help pay off in the long-term, and they’ll be following the evidence about how to proceed in future years, Hanson said.
“We are doing this for a couple reasons: To improve the roads by bringing them back to bare pavement after storms and to conduct a cost-benefit analysis once we are able to calculate any savings that occur when it comes time to clean-up the community after the winter,” Hanson said.
“We need to conduct this experiment to better understand the full cost of our snow removal operations, not just the cost of materials, but the manpower needed to treat and re-treat roads, the fuel costs potentially saved by having crews make fewer trips through a neighborhood and, of course, what savings we reap when it comes time to put everything back together in the spring.”
In addition to data and observations the Public Works staff will be collecting, Hanson said the town would like to have feedback from residents on the how these in-town roads are doing this winter.
Hanson can be reached at 472-3884 or dhanson@fortfairfield.org.
