Snow Clearance: Exceptional Measures For an Exceptional Winter

All the operations are being slowed down by the truck traffic jam at Turcot Yard. As the usual snow disposal sites are full, the Ministère de l’Environnement has authorized the use of the former Turcot railway yard as a snow disposal site. Since LaSalle's snow disposal site on boulevard Angrignon has exceeded its capacity of 1,600,000 m3, most of our snow removal trucks are being sent to Turcot Yard. Given the fact that 14 boroughs or contractors are converging at the same location and the fact that the distance is greater, and in view of the congestion around Autoroute 20 as well, each truck trip is taking longer than usual.

From the start of winter to mid-February, LaSalle has had to remove over 1,450,000 m3 of snow—twice the amount that LaSalle removed, on average, for the entire winter, during the past 21 years. These statistics don't take into account the 18 centimetres of snow that fell on March 5, nor the snowfalls forecast for this weekend. To date, 1,700,000 m3 of snow has been disposed of (over 48,000 truck trips) at the Angrignon snow disposal site. The site is accepting snow only from 4 of the 10 snow removal areas in LaSalle, and the rest is going to Turcot Yard. This is the first time that LaSalle has reached the full capacity of its site, as the largest volume of snow recorded to date was 1,366,247 m3 during the winter of 2000-2001.