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Snow removal: ‘We did our best with the resources budgeted and allocated to us,’ says Yk’s public works director

Snow removal efforts from the city continue as some areas have not yet been reached for snow clearance.
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Snow on Franklin Avenue turned slushy recently. Kaicheng Xin/NNSL

Snow removal efforts from the city continue as some areas have not yet been reached for snow clearance.

Chris Greencorn, director of public works for the City of Yellowknife, told Yellowknifer how he thinks the battle to clear roads and sidewalks of this month’s heavy snowfall is progressing.

“I think it’s going fairly well. We engaged some third-party support on the weekend to hit it a little harder just to get caught up and get (access to other roads) that we didn’t get to yet because of our priority system.”

Greencorn said the municipality hired four contractors to aid in the snow-clearing, after close to 60 cm had fallen during the month.

“(The contractors) concentrated on the Frame Lake area, which is Finlayson Drive and adjacent cul-de-sacs and streets. (They) also concentrated on Niven, the Range Lake area, which is Borden Drive, Magrum Crescent, and the area behind Walmart,” he said. “We also had our own city forces, I believe, in the downtown area.”

Greencorn said he cannot remember a previous time during his 10-year career in Yellowknife when the city has engaged contractors on this scale to remove snow.

“We’ve always reached out to seek help for trucking, for example, if we needed a couple extra dump trucks for the snow removal to be carried away to our dedicated snow dump areas… We’ve engaged contractors in that in that respect, but not to the full-scale removals that we’ve had this year,” he said. “This will be a first for us. I believe we had similar snow events in 2008, (but it was) more spaced out and more sporadic so we were able to catch up. This is the first time in my in my memory that we got hit this hard, and this fast and this much.”

An Elder with a walker found it challenging to maneuver on a snowy sidewalk. Kaicheng Xin/NNSL
An Elder with a walker found it challenging to maneuver on a snowy sidewalk. Kaicheng Xin/NNSL

This wasn’t a matter of the city bowing to public pressure, according to Greencorn.

“No, I wouldn’t say that. Because of the accumulation (of snow) in short windows, it was hard for the equipment and staff to fully catch up before there was another event,” he said.

“We take our budgets very seriously. We didn’t want to overspend without having a closer look at it but the last event on Thursday, for example, really pushed us to the max. That’s when we decided to engage third-party help just to get caught up and try to provide some relief for residents as quickly as we could.”

Alex Grissin, a driver for DJ Towing, said employees of the company worked long hours last Thursday and Friday pulling vehicles from snow.

”We’ve been really busy since everybody (started getting) stuck in their driveways, the alley way or in the road. It’s just slippery,” he said. “It’s been pretty much non-stop for the last two days. We’ve been working all hours through the night, through the day, 48 hours now.”

Greencorn expressed his appreciation of city staff and stated that they did their best.

“I always like to thank our staff. It’s been a long couple of weeks… We also have to maintain daytime operations so they’ve been hitting it pretty hard,” he said. “Unfortunately, we fell behind because of the accumulation (of snow) but we did our best with the resources budgeted and allocated to us.”

The city did not state prior to press deadline how much was spent on the contractors.

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A pedestrian walks extra cautiously on the sidewalk along Old Airport Road. Kaicheng Xin/NNSL
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Snow-like sludge builds up in the wheel wells of a taxi. Kaicheng Xin/NNSL
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A pickup truck drives through the ruts left by previous vehicles. Kaicheng Xin/NNSL
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The City of Yellowknife put out signs to inform the public of snow clearing, which means private vehicles cannot park on the side of the road. Kaicheng Xin/NNSL