Recent winter storms have kept Public Works employees in Buxton, Gorham and Westbrook in the drivers’ seats of plow trucks for hours on end.
They rack up a lot of miles.
Buxton drivers plow 125 miles of road, according to Hunter Cox, Buxton Select Board assistant. That equates to 250 lane miles, which is calculated by multiplying the length of the road by the number of lanes. A 2-mile road with one lane in each direction, for example, requires a total of four miles of plowing.
In Gorham, Public Works Director Terry Deering reports his crews plow nearly 300 lane miles on about 147 miles of roads.
Westbrook plows 100 lane miles, said Public Services Operations Manager Arty Ledoux.
For comparison, there’s about 112 miles between here and Boston and it’s 315 miles to New York City.
Gorham also plows out all town-owned facilities, including schools, and clears 13 miles of sidewalks, Deering said.
Westbrook schools contract out their plowing, but Public Services plows out all other municipal buildings and 20-plus miles of sidewalks, Ledoux said.
During one of the recent snowstorms, Gorham spread 100 yards of salt and 150 yards of sand. Westbrook, which measures by the ton, averages 120 to 150 tons of salt per storm, Ledoux said.
Cox said the amount of treatment Buxton spreads on roads per storm “varies drastically” depending on road conditions and Buxton Public Works couldn’t put an average on an amount.
It’s also impossible to calculate the pounds of coffee the collective drivers might consume per storm.
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