The City of Grande Prairie says the amount of salt to be used on roads around the municipality is likely to be increased as the temperatures start to rise.
Transportation Manager Robert Carroll says a major challenge in stripping ice off roadways comes from the products city uses to get rid of the ice, as salt loses effectiveness in frigid cold temperatures. He adds with a forecast expecting to be a little more forgiving over the next week or so, they should be able to get a good handle on the situation.
“The best we can do is get some grit on top, but lots of sand on the surface, hoping it bites the ice and at least you’ll have a little bit of traction on top of that ice,” he says.
“The forecast looks like we’re going to come out of the deep freeze, and that’ll give us a chance to get some deicer out there, maybe put some salt out in key areas and burn off that ice so we don’t have to deal with it anymore,” he adds.
Carroll says when it comes to overall snow removal, they are currently around 75 per cent complete when it comes to residential snow removal, but admits it has been a long slog thus far. Carroll says they started the most recent round of snow removal on December 27th, and have since expanded the size of the vehicles used to haul snow away, including double tractor trailer-sized transports.
“At last count, we are getting close to the 5,000 load mark at our snow dump so far this year, and we’ve probably got another 2,000 loads on the road right now,” he says.
“We will be hauling snow this week, next week, and the week after that from windrows only, and what we [then] like to do is start cleaning up site distance at intersections and that type of thing, and that work will be ongoing for quite some time.”