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Contractors stay busy with borough roads

Kenai Peninsula Borough

 

Anyone who makes a seasonal living pushing snow has seen no shortage of work this winter. Kenai Peninsula Borough Roads Director Dil Uhlin says when the snow hits, his office will field as many as 100 phone calls in a day, plus emails, from residents across the borough letting them know what the conditions are like.

 

“The contractors are human. They move as fast as they can move. (And) you have to expect breakdowns when you have machinery out working. And on occasion, a road will get missed, so it’s good that we get the phone calls because I can promise you, once or twice each snowfall, there’s a road that gets missed.”

And sometimes, that’s on purpose. When the forecast calls for snow on back to back days, road inspectors may hold off dispatching contractors until the system has passed to try and save a little money. Crews get called in when accumulation hits the four to six inch mark, but the kind of snowfall matters, too.

“It’s subjective when you look at the snow. We say we’re looking for four to six inches, but there’s different types of snow. If it’s 12 degrees and snowing, it’s light fluffy snow you can get around in fairly easy in six inches and that’s when we’ll start plowing. If it’s wet and heavy, (at) four inches, people start getting stuck, so you’ve got to play it by ear there.”

Five regions divide the Peninsula with multiple units in each region. There are a total of 28 local units, each with its own contractor and some stay busier than others; unit five at the north end of the North Road in Nikiski for instance, or some areas down south at a little higher elevation.

“You’ve got a couple units at the end of East End Road where they’re getting a lot more snow just based on wind patterns. Then you’ve got a Clam Gulch area, there’s that low spot in there that’s got its own little climate and maybe nowhere else on the west got any snow and they got eight inches over night. So we rely on our contractors. They’ll let us know when we have those anomalies and we’ll give them the thumbs up to go ahead. When we know we’ll have weather patterns coming in, we’ll hit that desired depth (and) based on the conditions we’ll call them out. The contractors have four hours to respond...it’s unreasonable to say go and expect them to be out on the road in 20 minutes.”

One big change made recently is the order in which the different units get attention. If the road in front of your house was cleared first after the last big snowfall, it will be last the next time.

“If a contractor starts on the same side of a unit every time, and your average plowing time is an hour to an hour and a half per mile, respective units can be anywhere from 20 to 37 miles in length, if you start in the same spot every time, you’ve got the same person sitting there in their driveway wondering why it’s been 37 hours and the road hasn’t been plowed yet. So the alternating times thing we hope shares the wealth or shares the pain, depending on how you look at it.”

Uhlin says since the last round of snowfall, crews have gotten all the roads clear and mostly have the snow pushed back to give the roads their regular width. Some light snowfall is expected this weekend, but no major accumulation.

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