As most folks in Bentonville know, we get ice and snow periodically, and most recently for nearly 2 months back in Jan and Feb 2014. Its hard to think about when its gonna be 84 degrees today, Oct 9th! In my City Council “Meet and Greets” so far this election season, this snow and ice subject has come up as it pertains to the road conditions. So, I emailed Mayor Bob (McCaslin) about it, who directed me to Mike Churchwell and Tony Davis with the City Street Dept. These guys and their team (of around 18) work 24/7 when ice/snow events happen until there is no ice and snow (again, for 2 months back in early 2014), and then spend countless hours researching and developing plans throughout the calendar year for future ice and snow events. After a day of getting information and taking a “field trip” with James Smith, City Council member, Ward 3, and Tony Davis who is the Street Dept Manager, I found out the following information: Starting this year, The City of Bentonville will be doing several NEW things that includes “salt brine”, which is a salt water based mix that is good for road treatment down to 15 degrees. Additionally, the City will be using a treated rock salt, the “Beet 55” product, for road de-icing which is good down to 0 degrees. The beet juice does not allow the rock salt to clump, and is environmental friendly and can clear the roads. The priority of clearing: bridges and overpasses, then hills in the city, then arterials / inner city (flat). The City has also invested in a few new plows with hydraulics (plows left, right, forward, etc.) to go along with our 8 plows/trucks to clear our 500 traffic lane miles, at 10-20 MPH plowing snow. Every snow and ice event is different: if it snows first, that’s good (the city has a history of clearing the roads within 24 hours when we get snow only), but if it sleets / freezing rain / or ices first, that’s bad, as the freezing rain forms an ice bond to the asphalt and becomes like glue for snow and ice that may follow with normal weather “fronts”. Then, of course, the impacting of the traffic running over it, temps fall, and we got a problem. But because we live in a Midwest city (not south US, not north US), our resources are limited. As we all know, we have had winters where there was NO accumulation of ice or snow, so fiscally a City govt will usually not budget money on an event that may, or may not, happen. However, in the event ice and snow happens, I wanted you to know how our City is preparing and spending for the future, based on past experiences we’ve had in the past. IMO, our Street Dept has put forth great effort and conducted intelligent research in order for our City to make progress with this very important issue. Please feel free to SHARE this post.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:05:42 +0000
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