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Lynbrook, East Rockaway feel winter's wrath

How village DPWs are dealing with the snowy, icy conditions

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Snow, ice, howling winds and body-numbing temperatures — winter has made its presence felt this year as Long Island continues to be hit with storms.

In both Lynbrook and East Rockaway, crews from the departments of public works have toiled nearly nonstop to keep roads and walkways as safe as possible for residents. “The DPW has been working day and night shifts all season,” said Lynbrook Mayor William Hendrick. “They’ve done a great job keeping the roads cleared, plowed, sanded and salted.”

“The cold temperatures we’ve had this year can definitely pose some challenges,” said Kevin Conklin, superintendent of the East Rockaway DPW. “If you have a quick snowstorm and you’re able to take care of it with one or two sanding and salting operations, it’s not too crazy. But when you have a snow situation like we had last weekend, where there’s snow, sleet, slush, you have to go out and do it before also. And if it’s going to get colder fast like it has been, you have to get out there quickly afterward and make sure it’s not going to freeze or get icy.”

Both villages say they are well below their winter road-clearing budgets, crediting the savings to the use of a mix of sand and salt to keep roads from icing, rather than salt alone, which can be more expensive. They do caution, however, that more storms before the end of the season could force more spending.

“Right now we’re under budget, and we’ve worked hard to make sure that we don’t spend more than we’ve allotted,” Conklin said. “But more snow means more plows, more salt, more crews that have to work overtime overnight, so it’s still a very fluid situation until winter is gone for good.”

Plummeting temperatures can pose another set of problems for the crews in charge of managing the snow. Clearing a parking lot or street means putting the snow somewhere else, and where, exactly, that somewhere else is can be difficult to figure out.

“Luckily, this year we haven’t had as much snow that we’ve had to haul, compared to last year or other years past when we’ve gotten multiple feet at once,” Conklin said. “But … when we have hauled snow, we’ve put it in front of the band shell.”

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