Mild winter helps keep snowplowing budgets in check

BANGOR – Despite the below-average snowfall throughout New England this winter, Maine isn’t likely to see the same level of savings as their balmier southern neighbors, whose plow trucks have sat idle for much of the winter.

“Compared to last year we’ve saved significantly,” said Brian Pickard, highway maintenance engineer with the Maine Department of Transportation.

While the Maine DOT is expected to save more than last year, Pickard was quick to add that last winter was hardly typical. Last year, frequent storms forced the department to ask the Legislature for an extra $1.5 million to keep up with their snow removal efforts.

“We have no intention of asking for more money this year,” said Pickard, adding that last winter was the first in his 10-year tenure that the department had to make the request.

Even with the extra state money, the department had to scale back its spring operations by another $1.5 million to help pay for its winter plowing and salting, which lasted well into April in some areas of the state, he said.

But while the DOT is about $3 million ahead of last year, according to Pickard, he noted that in terms of state spending on snow removal, it has been an average winter.

“We’re really not saving any money when you look at it that way,” he said.

While there might not be as much of the white stuff here in Maine, neighbors to the south are downright green, with the Pennsylvania Department of Transpiration expecting to save $25 million this year. In Pittsburgh, rock salt domes are still filled to the top.

“I can’t imagine that,” said Pickard, who estimated that the state would have about 10 percent of its rock salt – an average amount – in reserve at the end of the winter.

As one moves north, the savings tend to go south.

In Worcester, Mass., the public works department budgeted $1.1 million on snow removal this year and spent about $1.3 million. Last winter, the city overspent by $2 million.

But snow removal budgets are not just based on how much of the white stuff hits the ground, say Maine transportation officials, many of whom characterized this winter as average in terms of the number of storms and the amount of time and material used on the roads.

In the Bangor area, snowfall so far this year totaled 61 inches, well below the 76-inch average, according to Kirk Apffel, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Caribou.

But in Bangor’s sister city of Brewer, public works director Frank Higgins said his department is actually over budget this year with a number of small “nuisance storms” keeping the city’s plows and rock salt on the roads.

“It’s been a deceptive winter,” he said Saturday. “We had a whole lot of storms that dragged on without a whole lot of accumulation.”

Portland, too, saw more green than white this winter with just 32 inches of snow compared with its 30-year average of 69 inches.

In the northern Maine town of Caribou, which averages 112 inches of snow, only 85 inches have fallen so far this year, according to the weather service.

Like his state counterparts, Caribou public works director David Bell said his crews, too, have had a typical winter despite the below-average snowfall.

“You still have to keep the roads safe and plowed,” he said.

And as anyone in Maine knows, winter doesn’t go quietly.

While the calendar might say spring is here, April often has a wintry surprise in store – especially for those in northern Maine, where a foot of snow falls on average that month.

But, with the crocuses peeking out of the ground and the last remnants of snow melting away, Pickard has had enough.

“I’m officially tired of winter,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.