Warmer winter keeps cities green

January 12, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

ST. PAUL, Minn.

The warm, brown winter that has disappointed snow lovers in much of the U.S. has put more green in the pockets of state and local governments that had their budgets busted last year by the high cost of keeping streets and highways clear.

Cities that normally spend millions on salt, sand and snowplows are happily saving the money for other purposes. Some are even taking advantage of the mild weather to carry on with outdoor projects that would usually have to wait until spring.

“There’s a sigh of relief,” said Chris Sagsveen, who manages road and bridge operations in Hennepin County, Minnesota’s most populous because it includes Minneapolis.

In 2011, his department spent its entire snow-removal budget for the year by the end of March. He dreaded the potential for another fearsome winter. But the county barely spent a penny in the final months of 2011. So far this year, it hasn’t tapped the snow budget once.

For virtually the entire season, cold air has been bottled up over Canada. La Nina, the cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that affects weather worldwide, has nudged the jet stream farther north. And air pressure over the northern Atlantic has steered storm systems away from the East Coast.

In Minnesota and North Dakota, crews have parked their snowplows and are patching roads and highways instead. Chicago spent just $500,000 on plowing in December, down from $6 million a year earlier. In Buffalo, N.Y., public-works overtime is down by 25 percent, and the city has saved more than $300,000 on salt.

Syracuse, N.Y., one of New York’s snowiest cities, has had 13 inches this winter compared with an unusually heavy 77 inches by this time last year. Public Works Commissioner Pete O’Connor said he’s saved $500,000 in salt, overtime and fuel.

“This is Mother Nature’s way and a lot of praying on my part,” O’Connor said. Instead of plowing, his crews are out collecting discarded Christmas trees, which in some years don’t emerge from snow banks until spring.

In St. Paul, where a few meager snowfalls have melted within days, the temperature hit a record 52 Tuesday — a reading more appropriate for April.

The story is the same across most of the country. Marathon County, Wis., spent half as much to plow snow last month as the $600,000 it forked out in December 2010. North Dakota’s snow-removal costs fell by nearly half, to $1.6 million through November. And overtime at one state shop in Bismarck plunged from almost 6,000 hours last winter to almost nothing.