North Shore Town To Give Snow Piles Burial At Sea After Massive Winter Storm

MARBLEHEAD, MA — As cities and towns across the state scramble to find places to put all the snow that fell during this weekend's massive winter storm, one North Shore town is giving the giant snow piles the Boston Tea Party treatment.

The Marblehead Select Board voted to allow the dumping of snow into the harbor this week during an emergency meeting on how to deal with the nearly two feet of snow that draped the seashore town Sunday and Monday.

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"My reason for requesting this is that we see a threat to public safety," McHugh told the Select Board. "That really is all the snow that we have moved has now been deposited on sidewalks and street corners, so there is difficulty seeing. The streets are very small, so we now have a narrower street to get your emergency equipment through.

"And we have no place to actually put our snow the next round that comes through without keep piling it higher and higher."

McHugh said snow tossed into the harbor will mostly come from the most dense areas of the town, including the business district, historic district, school crosswalks and busy sidewalks.

She said the snow was to be dumped at State Street Landing and Riverhead Beach and will be brought from downtown to locations by dump trucks, mostly at night.

"We, obviously, try to do the minimum amount," she said, "but we want to make sure that we have safety for schools and that we have safety for people going to the businesses, and that public safety can reach all of our homes."

She said the fresh blanket of snow, with minimal road treatments and chemicals, will mitigate the amount of contaminated snow going into the ocean.

"Should all this snow melt," she said, "it goes into a catch basin and ends up in the ocean, which is where we are putting it."

The Select Board extended its snow emergency and overnight parking ban through the end of the week to aid in snow removal. Vehicles are required to be off public streets from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. through Friday morning.

McHugh said she expected most of the snow burial at sea to take place on Wednesday and Thursday night.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)