COLORADO, USA — After the recent snowstorm, many questions arose regarding how snow removal procedures were handled throughout the Denver metro area.
9NEWS spoke with several city officials to see how the snowstorm impacted the way each city would be removing snow in the future.
We also asked what procedures were successful during the snow removal process and if they intend to change anything.
Aurora
City spokeswoman Julie Patterson said the city pre-treated the roads there with liquid de-icer last week. Crews worked around the clock to plow through the snowstorm, she said.
The City of Aurora offers its snow plan and maps online to see which streets are considered to be a priority. Liquid and granular dicier is also used along with the equipment to help clear Aurora's streets.
According to the city's website, over 90 pieces of snow removal equipment are used to handle snowfall depending on how serious the storm is.
Boulder
Julia Causa, a spokesperson with the City of Boulder, spoke about a new piece of equipment the city used due to the volume of snow that impacted the city.
"Because this storm had a unique set of challenges, we brought in a road grater," Causa said. "That is a machine that breaks up the ice because of how this storm came in with so much snow so quickly. A pack of ice formed underneath the surface of the snow. So the snow grater was brought in to break that ice up on main thoroughfares and arteries throughout the city and get it out of the way of those roads."
Causa also mentioned how they had to relocate snow to a different part of town to alleviate some of the main areas of Boulder.
"Another thing the city did differently for this storm was because of the sheer volume of snow we hauled snow out to the airport to get it out of the central part of the city. Again just to take the volume of snow out of the main arteries," Causa said.
Boulder County also offers a snow removal priority map that can be found on their website.
Denver
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said Tuesday that he doesn't think you'll find a city the size of Denver or larger that does a better job removing snow than his city does.
"Every potential snow removal tool out there known to man is probably here in Denver, Colorado," Hancock said. "I'm not sure you'll find a city that's at our size or above that will do a better job of removing snow than Denver does."
This statement comes after a week of criticism over the state of the city's side streets.
"We can always get better, but I can tell you, what more can you do in the midst of a storm on a holiday weekend," he said. "You've got a team moving in now with plows on the streets, and they have never stopped trying to improve the passages since that storm hit."
Denver Public Works made a last-minute decision to drop de-icer on side streets Monday night into Tuesday morning, something they said was meant to show residents they heard their complaints and were doing something. A spokesperson had previously said de-icer wouldn't be effective.
"We'll see if it's effective or not and then we'll evaluate that moving forward, but right now, our current plan in place is the best plan that we've had to be able to respond in an effective manner," said Eulois Cleckley, Executive Director of Denver Public Works.
Golden
Dan Hartman, public works director for the City of Golden, said they followed their snow removal plan and that it did not create any issues when removing snow.
"We are set up to plow the entire city for this type of storm. It did not change our operations and we followed our plan as normal and had no problems," Hartman said.
The City of Golden follows a Winter Operations Maintenance Plan that focuses on clearing streets and provides access to vehicles as soon as possible.
When it comes to their procedures changing, Hartman said they did use new people to plow snow but they wouldn't be changing much of their procedures.
"I don't know if we would change too much we have from new people the first time they were all plowing and we used the leaf cart to help them with where the route would go," Hartman said. "We might change that up just a little bit but at this point, I'm not sure there's much we would change."
Parker
Danny Smith, streets manager for the Town of Parker, said no changes were made for the town's snow removal procedures and credited it to be a successful approach.
"The Town of Parker, through planning, pre-staging of equipment, de-icing materials, and the most important asset, qualified operators, has been able to successfully manage any type of snow event thus far," Smith said. "The Town of Parker has not implemented changes as a result of last week’s snow event."
Their snow removal protocol also allowed access to primary and secondary streets during the snowstorm.
"During the most recent snow event, town staff were able to keep primary and secondary streets traversal during the entire event," Smith said. "In addition, town staff were able to provide service to local (residential streets) once during the snow event and once following the cessation of snow accumulation."
Thornton
Brett Henry, executive director‐infrastructure for the City of Thornton, shared how the amount of snow and the duration of the chilling temperatures following the storm slightly altered the city's snow removal procedures.
"Given the depth of the snowstorm and the magnitude of how many days of freezing afterward, we changed up a little bit from the standpoint that we plowed residential streets. We provided one path down the center of each residential street to try to maintain access," Henry said.
He added that the idea of plowing residential streets to remove ice helped with residents' capability to access their homes.
"I was glad that we chose to go ahead to plow the residential streets," Henry said. "I think had we not plowed them we would have seen a lot worse: Ice jams and ice blockages within the residential neighborhoods, difficulty for passenger cars to getting in and out. I think we hopefully make the same decision again in the future and plow residential streets in this type of scenario for a snowstorm."
Westminster
For Westminster, public works and utilities director Max Kirschbaum said what impacted Westminster during the recent storm was the lack of warmup that usually follows the heavy snow.
"The only thing that's really a little bit different here about the typical Colorado metro area-type storm is that we didn't see that warmup that usually follows the heavy snow," Kirschbaum said. "So that just complicates some of that snowpack that accumulates especially on those residential streets."
Kirschbaum added that timing is everything as their protocol focuses on removing snow in residential areas as soon as snowstorm ends.
"In our case, we were onto the residential streets as soon as the snowfall ended. We wait to hit those smaller neighborhood streets until the snowfall ends because of our protocol is to make one pass down the center of each of those neighborhood streets," Kirschbaum said. "If you do it too early, you kind of defeat the purpose of doing it."
SUGGESTED VIDEOS | Local stories from 9NEWS