Crews Not Spinning Wheels After Cleanup Of Record Amount Of Sand, Road Breakup Repair Awaits

The brutal winter isn’t over yet for North Idaho’s road crews.

“We set a record in recent memory for materials and labor,” said Idaho Department of Transportation spokeswoman Barbara Babic. “It’s been a long winter.”

The crews started their snow watch in October and still were ready to warm up the snowplows as recently as last week, she said.

She overheard one crew member quip over the radio recently, “It’s only 100 and some odd days until winter.”

Between now and then, the focus is on sprucing up the roadways.

State and local highway districts anticipate an unusually high amount of road repairs this summer.

“There’s quite a bit more breakup on the roads than normal,” said Ken Renner, Eastside Highway District superintendent.

In recent weeks, highway crews have been busy cleaning up the record amount of sand dumped on the highways over the winter. The sand will be recycled for use as fill for road projects.

State highway crews dumped 110,000 cubic yards of sand material and 150,000 gallons of de-icer solution in North Idaho over the winter.

That compares to an average of 76,628 cubic yards of sand and 53,785 gallons of de-icer in each of the past five years.

Local highway districts also used more materials than usual.

“Our sand pile is very small,” said Herb Heisel, Post Falls Highway District road supervisor. “I would say we probably used 30 percent more material than we did the winter before.”

The harsh weather may have contributed to an increase in accidents. The five northern counties reported about 100 more accidents in December than in each of the previous two years.

The bright side to the heavy snowfall and November’s ice storm was that several counties were named federal disaster areas.

As a result, local highway districts have been able to get financial help from the federal government to cover the cost of extra man-hours, materials and the cost of cleaning up ice storm debris.

Lakes Highway District, for instance, recently received a check for $107,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The check will help cover costs associated with opening Hayden Lake Road, which was impassable for days following the ice storm.

Post Falls Highway District, where crews worked nearly every holiday and weekend over the winter, received a check from FEMA for $98,000.

Spending at the Panhandle district of the state Department of Transportation was 148 percent of normal, Babic said. She calculated that crews drove 632,000 miles over the winter, which also means lots of work for agency mechanics.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SANDFALL North Idaho uses more sand and de-icer than any other part of the state because wet winters and heavy snowfall bring more ice to the roadways.