February storm nearly depletes salt stores
By COURTNEY LAMDIN | Staff Writer
mireporter@mac.com
The recent bout of sunshine may have melted away all evidence, but the Feb. 23 snowstorm dumped at least a foot of heavy, wet snow on Milton and practically emptied the town’s tonnage of road salt.
According to highway foreman Dave Antone, this storm left only a couple of hundred tons, or a half-shed’s worth, of salt.
That may sound like a lot, but bad storms can use a lot of salt – last month’s biggie ate up about 150 tons, the most the town has used in any one storm, Antone said.
Road crews were out for more than 18 hours that day, trying to keep up with the snowfall.
“It seemed like we didn’t plow the roads at all,” Antone said, “but in actuality, we plowed them about three times as many passes through.”
The salt shortage is also due to a smaller budget: due to steep inflation over the last two seasons, the town budgeted for 1,500 tons this year when 1,800 tons is the norm.
Overall, the plowing season has been a light one, thanks to the lengthy break between this winter’s big storms, Antone said.
“We had a bit of small storms in the early December and early January timeframe,” he said. “Had we not had that lull in between, we would not have enough salt to take
care of this storm.”
In the days following the storm, the road crews cleaned up the aftermath and got ready for whatever Mother Nature brings next – as Antone put it, that will “hopefully be nothing.”
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