Ice removal taking big chunk out of Halifax snow-clearing budget

Above Watch: A mix of snow, rain and freezing temperatures have coated Halifax roads and sidewalks with a thick layer of ice. The city is now expecting to go over budget to break through all that ice. Rebecca Lau reports.

HALIFAX – Breaking up is hard to do, especially when it comes to the thick layer of ice that’s covering most of Halifax.

Cole Harbour resident Greg Matheson has spent the past two days using a pry bar to manually break up the estimated five inches of ice coating his driveway.

“I’m 45 years old and I’ve lived here all my life in this province,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of snow but I’ve never seen ice like this.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I'm 45 years old and I've lived here all my life in this province," he said. "I've seen a lot of snow but I've never seen ice like this."

All that ice has also taken a huge chunk out of the municipality’s snow-clearing budet.

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Since Friday, Halifax has brought in four graders at a cost of $10,000 each for every 12-hour shift.

“That’s just the cost of the equipment we’re bringing in and the extra resources,” said Darrin Natolino, the superintendent of winter operations. “That doesn’t count in the HRM staff that are taking part in that operation the supervisory staff.”

Natolino says that as the ice continued to build up after each storm, it became clear the city had to do more to remove the ice, which has started to form ruts in the streets.

The graders, which are usually used in summer road construction, are used to scrape and peel up the ice.

“Behind that grader we had to send some support which is basically loaders and backhoes to remove the chunks of ice that’s the size of furniture essentially,” Natolino said.

“We definitely didn’t want to be leaving those in front of people’s driveways or in front of fire hydrants.”

The snow clearing budget for Halifax for 2014-15 is about $20 million, but the city is on track to go over budget.

Natolino says the city spent $24 million last year and he expects we could surpass that amount this winter.

According to the city, there is a Snow and Ice Reserve Fund for times when winter operations go over budget.

However, last year’s costs were covered by the general-rate surplus.