Friday, March 29, 2024

Wicked winter weather wreaks havoc around Leavenworth

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This winter has brought with it many challenges for upper valley residents. From the wicked cold for weeks to the massive amounts of snow to the monstrous potholes, it has been a real roller coaster ride.

City of Leavenworth Public Works crews have been kept busy.

“Every year brings it’s own differences. We did have a fair amount of snow. What was different from last year was the cold weather. In previous years, we had the snowfall, then a warm period where it melts. It keeps it at a relatively manageable level. Combined, we have some pretty big piles of snow out there,” said City Administrator Joel Walinski

The cold weather has caused a number of problems, in terms of the freeze and thaw. The water gets into pipes, freezes, thaws and causes all kinds of problems. Walinski said they’ve had a number of frozen pipe issues.“This year, we’ve had major issues on the city side and homeowner side with frozen pipes. We’ve had a number of pipes at the meter box and from meter box to the main line in the street, where the pipes have frozen,” Walinski said.

Most of the frozen pipes were taken care of in short order, he said, but some have been pretty extensive. Several different methods were used to thaw the pipe to no success.

“The majority were less than three or four days. We did have two, where people were living in the house, which went for three to five weeks. We contracted to bring in bottled water. We tried a number of things, hooking electric current to pipes, heat tape, an arctic blaster which runs steam down the pipes,” Walinski said.

Eventually, the heat tape and steam did work, but it took awhile to get there. Walinski said it was a combination of trying different things and the weather moderating.

About a week after the extended cold snap, the city started hearing from people.

“We ran current through pipes and it thawed right away. But there were definitely a couple long term issues where we tried a number of things. Our longest one just broke free today,” he said. “The only thing I can account for it. On a number of these, during the course of the summer, we’ll have to do some work. We found the pipe at about two feet. We’re going to have lay that pipe at 3 or 3-and-a-half feet.”

In terms of the snow removal, Walinski said they have had as many complaints as last year. He said there are two types of complaints.

“If the snow only fell from 8 p.m. to midnight, everything would be fine. Unfortunately, it snows at 10 a.m. and there is too many cars on the street, whether if it Tuesday afternoon or Saturday,” Walinski said. “When it snows, there’s too many cars on the streets to do a good job plowing. People come how from work at 4 or 5 p.m. and the streets are a mess. We hear those calls.”

The other set of calls come when there is two or three inches of snow compacted on the roadway. It’s drivable when it is nice and cole. But when it starts melting and the “bottom comes out” the road becomes almost impassable.

“Some roads are impassable until we get the road grader or front loader out to move that slushy, icy stuff. When we plow that, we get calls about people getting stuck on the road from the slush and ice,” Walinski said. “We get the second call when we clear the slush and ice, which makes a nice wrinkle in front of people’s driveways. We get that call too.”

A lot of times, city crews will try to knocks those wrinkles down, but it depends on how big the pile is and how soon they want to get out. Walinski said they only have so many folks. If they are spending times opening up driveways, they won’t have time to keep the streets clean too.

Some older residents of town have complained, particularly from the Berg Rose Apartments, about getting locked-in by the snow. Walinski said that is probably more of a private property conversation.

“Even though it is illegal to park on the street from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., we do have a number of people who park on the street. When we are out there plowing at that time of day, cars do get plowed in,” he said. “It becomes an issue in terms people trying to get out. We do hear from them.”

The city has four or five places around town to store snow. The city removes the berms on U.S. Highway 2, where the snow forms between the berm and the roadway. Walinski said they do that a couple times a year and store that at the WSDOT lot at the west end of town.

They also have a rental agreement with some property owners downtown to store snow. The city also has parking lots that become temporary snow storage too. It is a three day process to clean snow off the roads in town after a snow.“The first piece of the day is try to get the roads open so people can get around town. The second piece is usually coming through, peeling back the snow, in case we have another snow. There are some roadways that don’t get hit in the first day,” Walinski said. “The third piece is to go around pushing back the snow at corners and intersections to get better visibility. That was a challenge this year.”

Walinski said they try to push the snow away at intersections. Same time, people don’t like to have mounds of snow in their front yards, so it is a balance. Anyone who has driven through town on U.S. Highway 2 could not help but notice the potholes, formed from that freezing and thawing.

It is definitely like the potholes on the residential streets, Walinski said.

“You have to wait until it dries out. Then, you can use cold patch or hot patch. For hot patch, the plants don’t really open until April or May,” Walinski said. “That would be the preferred route. Some of the holes on the city streets, we use cold patch. We have a lot of them because we have some city streets in not very good shape.”

Walinski said he has not heard from the WSDOT, but when we do get some drier weather, he expects they’ll use some cold patches to get us by temporarily. Then, come back in summer and do something more permanent.

“This is one of the first years since I’ve been here when the frost went down three or four feet. Frost going that deep really starts to move the pavement around. It actually reminds me of home (Minnesota),” Walinski said. “That is one of the causes breaking up the pavement. I’m not sure our roads are used to the frost going so deep.”

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

 

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