Downers Grove work crews are ready for the Chicago area’s first big winter storm, Stan Balicki assistant public works director says.
For the past couple of months Balicki said the public works department has been gearing up for the winter season. Now the plows have been attached, the rock salt stockpile has been treated with deicing fluid, and beginning Thursday, trucks were out presoaking the streets with a concoction of beet juice and salt brine that is expected to prevent snow from adhering to asphalt during the anticipated weekend shellacking.
“They’re not the kind of beets that you eat at diner. These are white sugar beets; We treat the salt with the same beet juice product,” he said.
Based on records Balicki has been keeping since 1987, the village in the past three years has been coated with an inordinate amount of snow, with about 52 inches dumped across the area the last two years, and about 60 inches the year before that.
The previous village norm, he says, averaged out to be about 30 inches of snowfall a year.
Both Balicki and Village Spokesman Doug Kozlowski said that in anticipation of the winter season they have one big request of drivers motoring around: Stay away from the snow plows.
“The feedback we get from our drivers is that people are impatient. We’re all in a hurry and we don’t think about what that plow driver has to deal with,” Balicki said. “Things … can happen when a plow hits a snow drift. It’s a big heavy piece of equipment on the road under conditions when it’s not the safest time to be driving.”
Balicki said there will be a tiered order in which streets are plowed, and he urged residents living in cul-de-sacs and back avenues to be patient.
He said major thoroughfares – streets that are typically conduits for thousands of cars a day – are at the top of the priority list, with roads near schools and the hospital following shortly thereafter.
“We ask people to be patient with us its one of those things where if we plowed those streets they would not be able to go anywhere anyway because you have to have the other roads clear,” Balicki said.
