DPW Weathering the Winter

February 24, 2025
• Following the recent snowfall, Public Works staff recount how Needham addresses weather events and their aftermath.

Needham received five inches of snow Feb. 9, which blanketed streets, sidewalks and just about every blade of grass. Across town, frozen snow piles and occasional ice indicate the lingering cold temperatures.

Needham and communities across New England have received sizable snow totals since December. This last snow event — and those that preceded it — indicate this winter will not follow the recent series of mild ones. Compared to last winter, Boston has seen close to three times the snow fall, with just over 28 inches of snow.

Preparing for snow starts before a single snowflake hits the ground.

Salting crews spent about 22 hours in Needham before, during and after the storm, Public Works Director Carys Lustig said. They typically pre-treat the roads with salt, and when the town hits two or three inches, the department switches “from a chemical operation of salting to a plowing operation.” That’s also when they bring in contractors, who handle about 50% of snow removal.

But just like a snowflake, “every single storm is different,” Lustig said. Given the slushy rain that followed the wetter, harder snow, salt pre-treatment is difficult, as the salt would dilute, she said. By scraping close to bare pavement, the salt more effectively treats the roads.

“There is sort of a depreciating value of salt, so the colder it gets, the harder it has to work in order to function,” Lustig said. “We do pre-treat our salt, so we add either a chemical to it, or we use brine in order to try to take that melting point lower. But when it gets very cold, salt is not as effective as it is closer to freezing.”

Icing events — which are less frequent in New England — “put a much higher degree of stress because they are harder to fight,” she added.

The DPW’s hand crew cleared more than 60 wheelchair ramps, as well as the Town Common, and a sidewalk plowing crew dealt with around 50 miles of sidewalk. It takes between two and four hours to clean the town after the snowfall, and the salt crew stays on call to treat areas of concern, Lustig said.

The town is responsible for plowing — not salting — only the sidewalks on school walking routes.

“The hoppers on the back of the sidewalk machines only go about 500 feet, so you have to constantly reload those hoppers where it just becomes an activity that is no longer fruitful,” Lustig said. “So what we do is we do request that all residents clear and salt their own sidewalks.”

A salt and sand mixture is freely accessible to residents by the DeFazio Field parking lot.

Salt is stored at the Recycling and Transfer Station, where employees primarily use their own equipment to clear off roadways and school parking lots. Two trucks with a plow attachment drive down Central Avenue and Greendale-Gould-Hunting end-to-end, RTS Superintendent Matt DeMarrais said. Others address side streets, dead ends, intersections and other sections of roadway.

Milder winters have resulted in much smaller snow dumps, DeMarrais said.

“It’s a lot easier,” he said. “If you get less snow, there’s less of an issue finding places to push it and stack it.

Dumping snow is a strategic operation, DeMarrais said. Piles of snow can’t be left to slowly melt in parking lots, since it would render several spaces unusable and hinder buses and other large vehicles.

“And the businesses, they need to know that residents coming to shop at the stores or go to the restaurants have a place to go,” he said. “So snow removal can be a major part of it, and it needs a place to be.”

At the southern end of the RTS’s yard waste area, the snow will pile up. With large snowfall totals, a contracted bulldozer feathers the RTS snow dump “into this enormous, fan-shaped mountain” that can get quite large after a long winter, he said. DeMarrais said the dump is about 12 feet high now.

Reflecting on the storm response, Lustig said keeping residents’ expectations in check is key, since the DPW’s actions are dependent on the weather forecast.

“Sometimes we’ll get complaints that there’s snowpack on the road, and then I’ll look at the person’s driveway, and there’s also snowpack on the driveway,” she said. “Well, the same thing that affects the road affects the driveway, and there’s not two different weather systems. I think sometimes what people are looking for from the public ways is simply not achievable with the weather that we currently have.”

Five inches of snow is manageable for the DPW and its contractors, Lustig said, but the equipment they’re receiving to combat a storm is smaller than they’re used to, meaning snow maintenance takes longer. Any snow total above six inches would put an increased strain on the department, but that has not been an issue this winter, she said.

Staffing vacancies — as Lustig shared with the Select Board last month — did not pose a major concern. Lustig described the effort as “all-hands-on-deck.”

During snow events, the RTS still opens on time. And while any major snowfall results in fewer visitors to the RTS, that doesn’t keep some away.

“I think there’s this pride that people have in being hardy New Englanders, and they’re like, ‘I’m not going to stop.’ But they probably should be off the road,” DeMarrais said. “Once the plows are out, they probably would be better to be off the road than coming here.”