Jackson, Cape Girardeau County road crews put in long hours battling snow

With local road crews wrapping up their winter weather operations, officials said workers put in long hours clearing the roads after 2011's first significant snowfall.

Jackson public works director Rodney Bollinger said city crews started laying a cinder mixture on the roads to provide better traction around 5 a.m. Thursday morning as the storm first moved into the area. By 10 a.m. crews were blading snow from the roadways. It takes about 18 hours to treat all 100 miles of Jackson streets with cinders and plows, he said.

Even though most of the significant precipitation was out of the area by Thursday afternoon, the cold air created slick spots as night fell, keeping crews working throughout the day Friday.

During winter weather events the city relies on a crew of eight workers, six plow trucks, four cinder trucks, a wheel load with a 12-foot plow and a motor grader to improve road conditions. Bollinger said the workers accumulated about 90 hours of overtime working the storm and used about 145 tons of the cinder and rock mixture to treat city roads.

Cape Girardeau County highway administrator Scott Bechtold said his crews started treating the roads at 7 a.m. Thursday, and by the end of work Friday crews had made at least one good pass along almost all of the county's roads. He said there are some roads that lead only to livestock grazing areas that are not used during the winter months, and those roads are not typically treated.

Even though Friday's temperatures were very low, Bechtold said the afternoon sunshine helped the cinder mixture the department uses work more effectively.

"I think the black color absorbs the sunshine well and appears to have some melting power," he said.

The county uses a cinder-gravel mixture similar to Jackson's instead of salt because it is more economical. Bechtold said it is given to the county free from Southeast Missouri State University, as a by-product of the university's power plant. He didn't know if cinder is as effective or more effective than salt, but he said there is a definite difference between the cinder-treated areas and untreated stretches. Primarily the county lays a generous amount of cinder in problematic areas such as hills, curves and bridges. Straight stretches of road tend to receive less cinder.

Bechtold had 16 crew members working 16 vehicles during the storm. He estimated 250 tons of cinder were used to treat roads, and the overtime cost to the county was about $1,500. He said there were also some extra fuel costs associated with the task of clearing and treating the county's 400 miles of road.

"It's a large-scale operation. We got a good crew and they really help each other out," he said.

He said while many people don't think his workers have a hard day just driving a truck for 8 to 12 hours, it is a very stressful day.

"Every minute is tense. When you're on slippery roads for hours, it does wear you out," he said.

cbartholomew@semissourian.com

243-8600