The winter season seems to have been longer and in terms of snow and ice, harsher than in many past years, leaving Albany and Clinton County residents with the task of dealing with snow and ice on several occasions.

As depressing as it might sound, we’re just about at the half-way point of the winter season just now.

With the more than normal amounts of snow, ice and sub-freezing temperatures, road conditions have often been on everyone’s minds, but none more so than the crews that are charged with keeping them clear and as safe as possible to travel on.

Locally, that task falls on the Kentucky Department of Transportation as well as the local road maintenance crews for Clinton County and the City of Albany.

This year, much like year’s past, the Kentucky Department of Transportation road workers have been putting in long hours making sure the roadways are safe to travel on.

“They have worked a large number of overtime hours,” Bruce Neeley, Transportation Engineering Branch Manager of District 8 said.

When the weather gets bad, road workers are put on 12 hour shifts and according to Neeley, the road department in Clinton County has been working a lot of shifts since the Christmas snow storm.

“We had a significant amount of snowfall at this stage in the winter,” Neeley said.

Neeley works from Somerset where the district office is located. He said, in a phone interview recently, the road department in Clinton County has plenty of salt.

“They have been receiving salt all winter,” Neeley said. “I don’t really know at this point if we will have trouble getting salt in the future. It’s not something we can foresee right now.”

Neeley said they have been in close contact with their salt vendors and as of right now there hasn’t been a problem obtaining salt for roadways.

Other than rock salt, the road department also uses a rock salt solution called, brine.

Before a potential “event” begins to put snow on the roads, brine is applied as a pre-treater. Neeley said if the crews can get the brine on the roadways and it drys before the snowfall hits an area, it does a sufficient job keeping ice from forming on the roads.

Neeley said if brine can get on the roads even a couple of days before the “event” hits, then it is easier to clear the roads when the salt trucks are spreading salt.

The State Primary Road System is an administrative system used to track roads within the state that are maintained by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Roads, streets and/or highways are classified by the type of service and function the facility provides, as follows:

State Primary Routes: Interstates, parkways (symbolized by brown lines on the maps) and other long-distance, high-volume intrastate routes that are of statewide significance. These routes generally link major urban areas with the state.

State Secondary Routes: Shorter distance routes of regional significance with both access to land use activity and mobility as their functions. These routes generally serve smaller cities and county seats within a region.

Rural Secondary Routes: Routes of subregional significance with access to land use activity (such as farm-to-market routes) as their prime function or urban arterial streets or other collectors.

Supplemental Roads: Routes that are state-maintained for various reasons but are not included in the higher classifications. They are generally short-distance routes such as frontage roads, cross roads or local access roads.

Other than state and federal roadways, Clinton County also has other roads that are maintained by the city and county road departments.

Albany Mayor Nicky Smith said his crew has put in a lot of overtime during the past couple of months.

“They are out at three in the morning and ome of them all night long. We have Nolan Subdivision, Tennessee Shortcut road … mostly side roads within the city limits,” Smith said. “We do pretty good with the snow. It’s the ice that makes it hard.”

The city also hires two contractors to help with snow removal.

“We obtain our salt through the county,” Smith said. “We try to hit the intersections and curves. Overall we do a pretty good job … everybody does.”

Smith said the city doesn’t pre-treat the roads because the city doesn’t own the equipment.

“It’s not really cost efficient to do so,” Smith said. “The city owns a truck and a blade. We have two contractors who have blades and we have a small salt spreader we use.”

Unlike last winter when temperatures were below freezing for numerous days in a row, the city hasn’t had as many water line breaks this winter.

“We’ve had two in the city and two out of town I think,” Smith said. “That is just where the ground freezes and it thaws out and starts moving.”

Even though the City of Albany gets most of its salt supply from the County Road Department and have not seen much of a shortage of salt, Clinton County Road Supervisor Jim Pennycuff said the county has had to buy more salt due to the harsh road conditions this winter.

“We had a severe shortage of salt a little while ago, but our current status if full,” Pennycuff said. “Every year we are on a contract for 120 tons of salt and we are well beyond that. We had to obtain another 90 tons. We are hopeful that will last us the remainder of the winter.”

Pennycuff said with a three to four-inch snow, the County Road Department will use around 40 tons of salt on the roadways.

He said the County Road Department is on a limited or reduced schedule for spreading salt.

“We only salt the hills, curves and intersections,” Pennycuff said. “Probably the worst road we have to salt as far as difficulty is Joyce Conner Rd. off of Hwy 350.”

Other roads the County Road Department is responsible for include, road and intersections close to Albany, the Old Burkesville Road, Churntop Road, Fairgrounds Road, Emergency Drive, Copeland Dr., Mountain Lane, and the Water Plant Road.

The County Road Department has four dump-truck type vehicles with snow plows and salt spreaders, as well as a smaller truck with a salt spreader to get to areas too small for the larger trucks.

“We will also do a pre-treat if it’s not raining. It’s not like the pre-treating the State Highway Department does, but rather we spread salt on the road early and it does help,” Pennycuff said.