Stephanie Croston

    When most people are home because of poor road conditions, a few are working to clear the roads.
     Crews from the state of Nebraska, Seward County and the city of Seward spend time removing snow and spreading sand and salt so people can get where they need to go.
     Mel Aldrich, city street superintendent, said his crews usually wait until the snow has finished falling before the four snow plow trucks and two motor graders head out. If the city has received three to four inches of snow and it's forecasted to continue, the crews will go out while it is still snowing, he said.
     The Seward Police Department and the E-911 Communications Center keep him informed on the state of the roads, and when they start to get slick, he sends out the five sand and gravel trucks.
     "Sometimes it's difficult even with chains on the trucks," he said.
     Highways 15 and 34 are the first routes to be cleaned, followed by the city's arterial streets-Hillcrest, Moffitt, Second, Columbia, Pinewood, Sixth, Ash, Seward and 14th. The residential areas are the final portions of the routes, Aldrich said.
     In the southern portion of town, the route includes the service road from McDonald's south.
     It usually takes between two-and-a-half and three hours to go over the city one time.
     The amount of ice on the streets determines the kind of work done, Aldrich said. In this last storm, since the streets were covered with ice before the snow came, Aldrich chose to leave the snow to provide traction. Crews kept sand in the intersections and, once the snow and ice started to melt, began to clear the streets.
     The county road crews don't put sand, gravel or salt on the gravel roads, mainly because of the expense, Russ Daehling, county highway superintendent, said. The snow removal plan calls for one application per storm.
     The county has 900 miles of gravel roads. Its sand, gravel and salt resources are used on the 30 miles of paved roads, Daehling told the county commissioners at their Dec. 18 meeting.
     "We are already half done with this year's supply," he said.
     To spread gravel and be effective, the air temperature needs to be above 32 degrees, he said. Sand and salt can be spread when it's below 32 degrees.
     The county's snow removal plan says the crews will not begin to remove snow until it has stopped falling or is forecasted to stop soon. If it's windy, the foreman in charge may decide to keep the crews off the roads until the wind speeds lessen.
     "No plowing or snow removal will be allowed when visibility is less than one-quarter mile unless foreman in charge deems it an emergency," the plan said.
     Primary and emergency routes are plowed first, and main roads take precedence. Residential areas will be the last to be done.
     Among the roads that are done first are the roads that have been programmed for paving, including Waverly Road between Seward and Garland, the Cordova Road, Ridge Road, the Goehner Road, Milford south, from the Beaver Crossing exchange to Highway 34, from Tamora to Staplehurst and Van Dorn Road between Pleasant Dale and Milford.
     Daehling said the county has 30 miles of blacktopped roads, 64 miles of roads programmed for paving and between 250 and 300 miles of collector roads.
     The county has 17 motor graders that may be used for snow removal-one in each precinct and one that rotates. Each precinct contains approximately 70 miles of roads, Daehling said.
     Plowing and sanding will be done on weekdays between 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. unless the foreman in charge determines otherwise.
     "It is not the county's intent to have a 'dry road' policy," the plan said.
     Daehling told the commissioners that the county has not seen weather like this since 1983 or 1984. Today, the county has more acreages than it did then, so it services a different clientele with different wants.