Public works director Steve Moore stands at the peak of one of the mountainous piles amassed by city crews’ snow removal. (Photo/Russ Hanson)

Nancy Edmonds Hanson
hansonnanc@gmail.com

More snow. That’s been the chorus of far too many weather forecasts since 2019 began. Bit by bit – broken by only one massive dumping in excess of 8 inches – the streets and avenues and parking lots and driveways of Moorhead have been filled and refilled with the winter’s primary product.
If you’re tired of digging out your driveway, consider Steve Moore’s mission. As head of the city’s public works department, he and his essential crew of 15 full-time equipment operators are charged with keeping Moorhead’s 500 lane miles of public thoroughfares safe and open. Grappling with nearly back-to-back snow events in the deep polar chill of the season, they’re putting in long hours to try to reach bare pavement … never quite quickly enough, it seems, to satisfy winter-wearying drivers.
“My guys are sometimes working 14-hour shifts,” Steve says. “They’re still charging forward hard. They have great attitudes. But I’ve got to say, they’re getting tired.”
February’s record snowfall has gotten on local nerves. Steve’s staff knows all about that, fielding waves of calls from frustrated, sometime angry homeowners with plenty to say about how the endless campaign is progressing. “Number one is driveways. We get all kinds of calls about pushing snow into driveways,” he reports. Moorhead has 11,500 driveways. Then he explains: “When you’re pushing snow down the curbline, it’s going to spread out wherever there’s an opening. That means driveways. There’s really nothing we can do about it.”
Many of the complaints come from those who live on the city’s 240 cul de sacs – more than in the entire city of Fargo. That configuration is a special headache for the snow fighters: “There’s no place to put the snow … especially with twinhomes. Some of them have no clear curb space – just eight or ten pairs of side-by-side driveways.” In recent years, he’s declined to concur on plats of new housing areas dotted with cul-de-sacs, prompting the city to ask developers to redesign their plans.
Not all callers are up in arms when they dial the department. “We appreciate calls that offer specific information, like ‘the corner south of Ellen Hopkins School is really slippery,’” he says. “That gives us something concrete to go out and deal with. Emails or phone messages that just say ‘Why aren’t the plows out?’ don’t help at all. For one thing, they are out, but they just haven’t gotten to your street. It takes time. We’re all in this together – have a little patience, please.”
Heavy snowfall has challenged Steve’s crews. During more normal spells of wintry weather, it takes from 10 to 12 hours to clear all the city’s streets, starting with those designated as primary and secondary routes. While plows are working those critical routes while the snow is falling, residential clearing begins right after it stops.
This year, though, the volume has slowed the process down. Now it’s taking up to 14 hours to open up the whole city. Disposing of the snow along the way is increasingly difficult, too, as boulevards already loaded from previous storms make curb-to-curb cleaning tough. “As the streets close in, we can push only so much up onto the piles before it starts collapsing,” he points out.
The director’s military background comes in handy as each so-called “snow event” approaches. He and his lieutenants gather to make a plan of action, based on the forecast. They consider not only projected snow totals but temperatures and wind, both offering their own challenges to the campaign.
The city’s fleet of snow-fighting equipment includes seven snowplows, four equipped with salt-sand spreading equipment, plus two more tandem dump trucks with conveyors and spreaders for salt-sand mixtures. Four pay loaders with snow-moving blades and three motor graders round out the heavy equipment. Some are sidelined during even the worst of times because of lack of manpower. Even with hands borrowed from the forestry and parks department, there aren’t enough on deck to keep all in motion. Steve notes the department can’t run a full 24-hour operation, since three or four must stand by to work additional shifts for if the event stretches out.
One of the snow fighters’ most useful tools these days is those salt-sand spreaders. Until five years ago, sand was all the city used to combat slippery streets. Now, though, they rely on various formulas, from all salt to all sand, to help tame slippery streets.
“Salt is very effective at temperatures over 15 degrees,” Steve explains. “Below that, we use salt-sand mixes. Sunny days are another factor. The whole decision matrix is based on conditions.
“But at zero, it’s all sand. We’re spreading it just for traction at that point. With high winds, it blows all over. We do what we can, but it doesn’t help much.”
An exception is expensive treated salt the department employs on certain high-traffic routes – the 20th Street overpass over I-94, for example, and 34th Street bridge over the railroad, where traffic has tripled due to underpass construction detours. Added chemicals lower the treated salt’s melting point to some degree. Cost, though, is a roadblock.
The premium scenario is when crews can pretreat bare pavement with a brine solution before the storm strikes. “Right now, you’re seeing more bare pavement around town because we could pretreat,” he says.
Salt has its pluses and its minuses, he points out. On the one hand, it creates safer streets and, in the long run, lower equipment operating costs. On the other, it’s has impacts on the environment; long exposure is notoriously corrosive on vehicles. “Keep your car as clean as you can,” he cautions.
The cost adds up in department dollars. Besides copious amounts of staff overtime, motor fuel is up this winter. Equipment repairs, too, are far higher than in the more docile days of recent milder seasons. Depending on how March shapes up, that may require some nips and tucks in the annual budget.
And here comes March. “So far, March is in the normal precipitation range,” Steve observes, “though it usually brings higher water content that’s harder to move than the light, dry flakes we’ve been pushing around.” While city crews are still wrestling to come to terms with winter, the flood season – where they also play a leading role – is right around the corner. The first citywide flood meeting of the year took place last week, with prospects squarely in the range of what can be readily handled – especially with all the work the engineering department has accomplished in recent years.
With a forecast for at least two more weeks of Arctic-style winter ahead, Steve counsels patience in the winter-weary. “Our guys tell me they’ve been yelled at as they’re out on the streets. They’ve fielded too many one-finger waves,” he says. “They’re just doing what we’re here for, providing the safest streets we can as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.
“We understand it’s frustrating, and we’re doing our best under some pretty difficult conditions. Give my guys a break. We’re all in this together.”