With the start Sunday of five days of springlike temperatures, Cambridge and Somerville are waiting to see how quickly the last of the winter’s accumulated snow melts away. Somerville city staff compare this year with 2015, when “the snow piles lasted until May,” and a Cambridge spokesperson said “the piles could linger until early summer without maintenance.”
Cambridge has three snow farms where Public Works crews haul it after 6 or more inches of accumulation on the street, including at Danehy Park and to the department’s 4-acre leased facility on Mooney Street in the Cambridge Highlands. Before last week’s rains, the Mooney Street farm measured approximately 300 feet long by 130 feet wide and was piled 30 feet high; the other piles “are much larger” but not measured, spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said.
“We have potential alternatives outside the city, if more capacity is necessary,” Warnick said.
Though warm weather and rain could affect thawing significantly, typically piles of this size would take until summer to melt away completely, Warnick said.
Somerville saw “significantly higher volume” of snow than in recent winters, but didn’t have exact numbers yet on what accumulated from the 66-plus inches of snow that fell, said Grace Munns, a city spokesperson.
“DPW does not track exact volume of snow hauled off of streets, corners, crosswalk ramps, etc.,” Munns said, but this year has “been a massive undertaking.”
The department had to make an extra effort to pack in snow to maximize room at Somerville’s two lots, hauled some to Revere after hitting capacity and yet in late February was looking for still more snow storage options, Munns said. That drew a comparison to 2015, when “we had so much snow that we had to get emergency permission from the state to store it at Draw Seven State Park, which helped with road clearance but resulted in major cleanup needs at the park afterward.” Draw Seven is in Assembly Square.
The city also recently refurbished a broken ice melter bought during the Joe Curtatone mayoral administration, Munns said.
“Because snow removal is significantly more time-intensive than plowing, it is typically prioritized for main roads, squares and critical areas,” Munns said. “The city does not have capacity to remove snow from all residential streets, so in many areas snow is cleared and left to melt naturally.”
Snow corps
Cambridge city councillors approved a snow corps proposal Monday to address the potentially dangerous “patchwork” nature of snow clearing in the city – some sidewalks, bus stops and crosswalks are well cleared 12 hours after a snowfall and some not, councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler said, and the work can be especially challenging in a year such as this one: “For the first time in a few years, we’ve had multiple snowstorms, including one weekend before last that dropped more than 30 inches,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said.
Bringing on emergency snow shovelers – which would build on a Student Shoveler Program – would follow the example of New York, Baltimore, Chicago and most recently Boston; Sobrinho-Wheeler’s order asking for a report on how well those programs work drew no opposition from Cambridge Public Works officials, he said. The order would also look at Cambridge’s snow exemption program for seniors and the disabled, so they are not fined if they cannot clear snow on their property, and the number of citations for poor snow clearing issued over the past three years.
Minneapolis has a system that bills a property owner for the cost of some shoveling, vice mayor Marc McGovern said.
Some councillors regretted the loss of community that can spring up around residents coming out to shovel snow, or to help a neighbor shovel. “I love the idea of continuing to have property owners responsible for shoveling, since I see it as part of civic responsibility,” councillor Patty Nolan said.