We may be seeing ‘a lot of little snowstorms,’ but they’re still eating up Berkshire snow removal budgets | Local News

PITTSFIELD — While the storms this winter haven’t produced towering snowbanks, they have taken a chunk out of municipal snow and ice removal budgets. 

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By the first week of January, Pittsfield had plowed through more than half of its $900,000 budget for winter snow removal. Across the county, smaller towns are also keeping an eye on their budgets, how they use overtime and finding the best, most cost effective, treatments for icy roads. 

And this balancing act is being guided by the finicky science of weather predictions during a winter so far filled with smaller, nuisance snowstorms.

“Our inability to rely on weather forecasting makes it very difficult from the get go,” said Ricardo Morales, Pittsfield’s commissioner of public services and utilities. “The best thing we can do is kind of prepare for the worst and that sometimes results in undue overtime costs.”

Unique among Berkshire County communities, Pittsfield uses both contractors and in-house labor to plow roads. This year, there’s been a shortage of contract plow drivers, which has also had an impact both on the budget and on cleanup time after storms.

At this point, $550,000 of the city’s $900,000 winter budget has been spent.

Morales said if there is a deficit, he will cut spending in other areas.

“Last year, our deficit was somewhere around $700,000,” he said. “I was able to lower that to about $400,000 by reducing how much I was spending in other areas of the Department of Public Works, and then that difference came from other departments in the city.”

Pittsfield thus far has about 25 inches of snow this season, with the heaviest storm in early December bringing about 7 inches of snow.

“Battling ice throughout the city is going to eat up material — liquid magnesium chloride, pretreated rock salt with magnesium chloride,” he said. “We also use sand, sometimes for grit, and we use regular rock salt untreated.”

As to pretreatments, Great Barrington this year for the first time is using a brine that the workers prepare in the highway garage and add rock salt that has been mixed with beet juice, soybean and corn byproducts.

In addition, during and after storms, Great Barrington is using rock salt that’s been treated with molasses, which allows the rock salt’s working temperature to drop below zero.

The enhancements and pretreatments are cutting the amount of rock salt the city pours onto its 75 miles of paved roads — from 18 tons per storm to somewhere between 4 1/2 and 7 1/2 tons. They also reduce the temperature that rock salt melts snow and ice to as low as negative 25 degrees, according to Joe Aberdale, Great Barrington’s superintendent of public works.

“There’s a 60 percent salt savings, which is great for the budget, and it’s also great for the environment,” Aberdale said.

Great Barrington’s varied topography — ranging in altitude from 600 feet to 1,600 feet above sea level — means that the same storm can present differently downtown than in upper elevations.

“So we could have snow up on Monument Valley Road and rain down here in town,” he said. “So we have to be prepared to tackle all different aspects of the weather.”

Great Barrington logged 14 to 15 inches of snow this December as opposed to 5 inches last year, Aberdale said.

“Our overtime is still fine,” Aberdale said. “At this point in the season, it’s early. We have spent a little bit more this year than we did last year.””

David Ruot, Sheffield’s highway superintendent, didn’t have time for an interview on Friday because he was heading out to remove downed trees from Thursday’s storm.

Still, “things are going good,” he said. “We’re right on track for our budget.”

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In Savoy, Highway Superintendent Todd Krutiak characterized the season in this way: “A lot of little snowstorms, which uses the same amount of product.”

In neighboring Windsor, John Denno, highway superintendent, said early storms have used up $64,000 out of Windsor’s $81,000 salt and sand budget and depleted much of the town’s $25,645 in winter overtime.

“You can’t use Chapter 90 or nothing,” he said, referring to state aid for roads. “It’s all town funded.”

If Windsor goes over budget for winter expenses, Denno will first look to other places within his budget to transfer money. If there’s not enough, Denno will approach voters at the annual town meeting to fill in the deficit.

In Lenox, Bill Gop, superintendent of public works, said the town is about one-third the way through the winter snow removal budget of $257,000.

“I think we’re about where we would want to be,” he said. “The 10-day forecast looks pretty dry, so that’s a big help.”

Still, the timing of a storm can have repercussions on overtime — and morale.

“Sometimes you’re lucky and the storms come in during the work day, and other times you’re unlucky, like New Year’s Day, you know, everybody’s off,” he said. “It’s a double-time situation. Sometimes we get lucky and they cycle in and they’re during normal business hours. … And other times it’s constant weekends or nights.”

Edward “Bud” Hall Jr., Dalton’s Department of Public Works superintendent, said he’s feeling confident about his budget right now, but that could change.

“I would guess from the past couple of years that we’ll probably end up getting one good snowstorm at the end of March,” he said. “We’ll see what happens between now and then.”