On the offense against potholes

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Pick a street, any street, and it’s likely to be afflicted with an unwelcome presence that’s causing a major inconvenience, even a safety hazard, for drivers: potholes.

The frigid winter, marked by ice, snow and consistently low temperatures, has left “craters” in Long Island roadways, said Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray, before she and Councilman Gary Hudes helped repair a pothole at the intersection of Hilda Street and Rowehl Drive in East Meadow.

The pair, joined by workers from the town Highway Department, announced a “multi-pronged” approach to combating potholes, including the use of employees from three town departments instead of the usual one.

Murray said that the town’s parks and sanitation departments would join the Highway Department in filling potholes to expedite street maintenance, a strategy she said the town employed last winter to great success.

She said that foremen would also be actively looking for potholes, in addition to fielding calls from residents, in order to identify “trouble areas.” “Major winter storms call for a major response from local governments,” Murray said. “We are employing a multi-pronged approach to knocking out potholes in the town.”

The town has fielded more than 1,000 calls from residents reporting potholes, she said, and workers are using more than 100 tons of asphalt per day to fill them. “And we will continue on that pace until the war on potholes has been won,” she said.

The officials encouraged residents to continue to report them. “It’s important, now that the snow is gone,” said Hudes, who represents East Meadow, “that people are looking for streets that have potholes.”

Local residents singled out Prospect Avenue, Seventh Street and Clearmeadow Drive as among the most pockmarked streets. “Clearmeadow Drive is terrible,” Monica Kirk-Genna wrote on the Herald’s Facebook page. “With people parking on the streets, it makes it almost impossible to avoid them … leaving you no choice but to go directly down the middle, pretty much hitting every pothole.”

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