The county has at least 20 days provision for road gritting in storage, a senior county executive revealed to the Advertiser yesterday, as the second cold snap of the winter began.
This means the county council has enough stock to keep Westmeath’s roads open until January 6, even in the unlikely hypothetical of it snowing until then, and no further deliveries of salt and grit can make it through until that date.
“We have 650 tonnes of salt and grit, mixed 50-50, and we’re minding it carefully. There’s another 30 tonnes of salt being delivered today,” said the senior executive.
Assuming a Baltic worst-case scenario, the council has also invested in six snowploughs, but as these are co-funded by the National Roads Authority (NRA ), they will be used primarily to keep the national routes accessible.
The NRA has instructed councils to ration salt stocks as already, the national usage of 70,000 tonnes has surpassed the annual average of 60,000.
Westmeath has been advised to spread just 35 tonnes a night, and to limit this to national primary and secondary routes, however the executive staff member who spoke to the Advertiser admitted Westmeath County Council was still trying to cover as many of its regional roads as it could. These are shown on the map on the council’s website homepage in the Download it section under winter gritting map.
“We’re not doing all of them, but many of them. We only have nine trucks so there are technical limitations. We’re sending men out in the middle of the night, sometimes twice,” he said.
“We’re trying to structure it to get the maximum number of miles done, and those [roads] we can’t do one night, we’ll do the next,” he added.
As the temperatures begin to drop for the weekend to a minimum of -10 in the county on Monday night, Westmeath County Council’s crisis management team will meet daily.
“We would appeal to residents and businesses to remove whatever snow and ice from outside their own house or premises they can,” said the senior executive, pointing out that the recent advice from the Attorney General freed accident liability from those who did.
“Put the snow to the edge of the path, or better still, on the nearest bit of lawn”.
