Snow Patrol

Village Hall has received high marks for its response to last week's blizzard—a response that continues as crews work to widen snow-clogged streets and chisel down towering snow piles in an effort to enhance visibility.

The work began Wednesday, Feb. 2, and since then "easily over 1,000 truckloads of snow" have been dumped at the north side of the Public Works facility, 5101 Walnut St., said Stan Balicki, assistant public works director for operations.

"It's a pretty unbelievable site," he said. "The snow pile is so big, it may not be melted until May or June."

And there is even more than meets the eye, as the land slopes down 10-feet. You wouldn't know it to look at the wall of white visible from the Public Works parking lot.

One by one, 10-ton dump trucks pull up to discharge their loads of snow. In the meantime, front-loaders work to disperse it. But a week after the Blizzard of '11, the area is fast filling up.

"At some point, we're going to run out of space here," Balicki said. The department considered renting a snow melter, such is used at airports. The snow is dumped into a hopper where it is melted. The water is then directed into a storm sewer.

But the cost of such equipment is prohibitive: $3,400 an hour to rent or $400,000 to buy.

So the work of hauling snow continues round the clock. "We have about 36 pieces of equipment that we can dedicate to snow removal," Balicki said. "We're working two 12-hour shifts, each with about 15 people, so half the equipment is in use at any given time."

As the village's resident experts on all things storm-related, the Public Works Dept. has seen all kinds. "Internally, we talk about every storm being unique," Balicki said.

In the case of last week's blizzard, there were crucial elements that distinguish it from 1999, when a foot and a half of snow fell on Downers Grove.

"It's the intensity of the storm—how fast it comes down," Balicki said. "In the '99 storm, snow fell over two, two and a half days. We could keep up with it better.

"This year, we had close to the same amount of snow in a 16- to 18-hour period," he said. "It came down quicker than we could keep up with it."