US Snow Removal Cost Hits $4 Billion.
As a major snowstorm makes its way across the middle of the country, another group of cities will need to put snowplows onto their streets. It has already been a brutal winter. Lake Effect Snow dumped three feet on the area around Buffalo.
*Snow Trends
The Federal Highway Administration puts the cost of snow removal nationwide at $4 billion per year. Keeping streets clean will become extremely difficult for some cities with modest budgets and rising snow levels.
Erie, PA, a small and poor city on the east shore of Lake Erie, is an example of a city that cannot handle vast amounts of heavy snow within its budget. The city has $6.5 million set aside. Supervisor Dean Pepicello recently said, “It’s not only sand and salt and those things, it’s fuel. It’s parts that you deal with on trucks that break down because they’re going 24/7. It is the overtime that we all have to pay. All of these things make a massive impact on the budget.” Erie’s snowfall can vary widely, by as much as a few feet a year.
Colder Winters
One would think that with global warming, winter would get warmer. However, that is not the case. Live Science states, “An expanding polar vortex is expected to lower temperatures across the eastern half of the U.S., with the potential for record-breaking cold in January.”
If winter is colder, even if only for a few years, the $4 billion spent on snow removal will rise.
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