Snow Plowing and Storage on Public Streets

One of the most challenging- and most rewarding- parts of living in a mountain town is dealing with winter snow removal.  Here are some facts:

Most Snow removal occurs at night: it is not safe to remove snow during the day.  Our plows are at least 11” wide and must travel quickly to move snow efficiently. It is simply not safe for us (or any town in our valley) to conduct snow removal operations during the day on a regular basis. A 6” snow event costs Hailey taxpayers about $16,000-$20,000.  We plow if more than 3” of snow accumulates, starting in priority areas. If it snows a lot during the day, be patient!  Barring unforeseen circumstances, we will be there that night.

In residential neighborhoods, snow is pushed to the side of the street. The entire winter’s worth of snow is stored on the sides of the streets. Hailey residential streets are between 60 and 100’ wide - we need all this area for snow storage in the winter.  Your property may not be as big as you think it is, as most of the City rights-of-way are off of the pavement on the side of the road. You can find information on your property lines here.

Downtown, we store snow in the middle of the road and haul it off after the storm. After the storm, we haul the snow to our Croy Canyon snow storage site. On a big haul night, we haul approximately 200 truckloads of snow with eight (8) haul trucks.  Each truckload contains 10-14 cubic yards of snow.  Each cubic yard contains 27 “shovels full” of snow so that is a LOT of snow!  We haul from midnight to as late as 10:00 AM.

Where does the hauled snow go? Hailey only has one snow storage site, west of Hailey on Croy Creek Road.  For any mountain town, a snow storage site that is proximate is absolutely critical to safely clearing the streets.  The City’s old facility was at Lions Park, very close to the Big Wood River; the current facility is an environmental improvement for the Hailey community.  We haul and stack snow during the night and early morning hours.  Main and River Streets would not function if we did not have somewhere to put the snow off-site.

Most of our subdivisions have a 10’ snow and utility easement on private property. This means in big snow years we may push snow onto your property in this 10’ area.

Requirements in our residential neighborhoods:

• • No vehicles or personal belongings may be parked within 6’ of the asphalt from November 1 to May 1 from midnight to 7:00 am. Parked cars make it VERY difficult for us to clear snow!  Hailey will have your car towed if you leave a vehicle or trailer parked in this area.
  • You are not allowed to push or snow blow snow from your private property into the public street from your driveway. Your snow must be stored on your private property. We are moving a lot of snow as it is: if you push your snow into the street, you are endangering your neighbors.  If you don’t have enough room to store snow on your property, you will need to pay a contractor to haul it off.
  • Driveway berms are a fact of winter living in Hailey. We know these “snow berms” are a hassle for you. In between snowstorms, we “peel” the snow and ice pack off the asphalt to make roads safer. During “peeling” operations, we strive to open up driveways with a loader. However, we cannot have the loaders out during normal snow removal operations, as it is unsafe. We seek to come back around with our loaders after storm events and assist in reopening driveways. We only open driveways during peeling operations, but we cannot promise this on a regular basis and you should not expect it.  You are responsible for your own berm!  If it is too much of a task, you may need to pay a private snow contractor to assist you.
  • What about a “snow gate” to avoid the berms? Not only have we looked into this, but we also own one.  Snow gates work well in towns where the driveways are spaced quite far apart. We have not had luck with them in Hailey, for these reasons:
    • The amount of snowfall we get here is greater than most towns that use snow gates; they do not function with deep snow;
    • Most driveways are 10-15’ from the next driveway, and there is simply not enough space between driveways in most Hailey neighborhoods for us to use this tool effectively;
    • Our current plows cannot accommodate snow gates, we would need all new equipment; and
    • We could not clear all of the streets in Hailey in one night, due to the slowness of snow gate equipment, meaning some neighborhoods would not get cleared for 2 days.
  • Mailboxes must be 8’ back from the pavement. You will need to keep this area cleared yourself for mail delivery if City street plows do not provide adequate access to the mailbox for the Postal Service.  We strive to avoid hitting mailboxes but sometimes we make mistakes!  Call us if this happens.