A Cleveland Public Works dump truck fitted with a salt spreader and snow plow clears Peerless Road of snow Tuesday morning
Cleveland Public Works began clearing city streets surrounding SkyRidge Medical Center and nursing homes at 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Ater that, all five trucks equipped with snowplows and salt spreaders cleared primary and secondary routes. The major arteries were clear by 10 a.m. and operators began working their way into residential areas.
Public Works Director Tommy Myers said his goal is to get the city functioning within 24 hours of a snow event, “but it looks like we’ve got another snow event coming in tomorrow and we’re running low on salt.”
The city’s salt stockpile was low due to a shortage caused by extreme weather in the northern states in 2014.
Myers tries to keep 450 tons in stock, but salt was not available during the summer months.
“The company we buy salt from limited us on how much salt we could purchase over the summer,” he said. “The demand for salt was so great from the winter they had up north last year and of course, they are having it super-rough up this year. They’re not turning loose of the salt. It’s all going north.”
Forecasts for more snow worry Myers. He was hopeful Tuesday morning that temperatures would rise into the 40s in the afternoon and melt the snow because of predicted snow on Wednesday.
“We had 300 tons of salt, but we worked from eight o’clock Friday evening until five o’clock Saturday morning,” he said. “We used almost half of it up then and we’ve probably ran through 50 tons today, so we’re getting low.”
Last year, he and assistant city manager Melinda Carroll located some of the precious commodity at the last moment.
He said Tuesday afternoon, he thinks they might have located 200 tons they could borrow — but they would have to pay it back.
If last summer was any kind of indicator, salt could be scarce again this summer. If the same market conditions exist, the city could again enter into the winter months with a shortage of salt.