Unsure if piles of heavy snow blocking entrances to neighbourhood pathways and park trails are to be removed under the city’s new windrow-clearing program, some Mississauga residents have been picking up shovels and doing the work themselves, a city councillor says.

Mississauga Ward 2 Coun. Alvin Tedjo said on Wednesday some people in his south-end community, “a number of excellent community members,” have recently “gone out and volunteered to shovel those (buildups of snow) by hand” so area residents can more easily access the paths and trails.

Speaking at the City of Mississauga’s general committee meeting, Tedjo asked city staff if the new citywide residential windrow-clearing program is tasked to take care of those areas.

Under its new winter maintenance plan, the city is for the first time clearing windrows in front of all Mississauga homes — a total of some 134,000 driveways — as part of regular services.

Windrows are the difficult-to-move piles of hard-packed snow and sometimes ice left at the end of driveways after the streets are plowed by the city’s winter maintenance crews. They’ve been a contentious issue in Mississauga the past few years as residents have been pushing city council to deliver a winter plan to keep their driveways accessible.

Using specialized new equipment, plows now clear a 10-foot-wide opening to allow cars to enter and leave home driveways. The service is not available for condominiums, commercial properties and homes on private roads.

Windrows blocking trails, paths will be cleared by the city

Helen Noehammer, Mississauga’s director of works operations and maintenance, told Tedjo while windrows that block paths/walkways and trails/multi-use trails are not part of the new residential program, they are still to be cleared by city winter maintenance workers.

Such windrows, she said, are to be “picked up as part of our sidewalk or walkway/pathway clearing program” anywhere between 24 and 36 hours after a storm depending on factors that include the amount of snow that’s fallen.

Mississauga is also for the first time plowing all sidewalks throughout the municipality — adding secondary sidewalks to the priority roadside routes this season — as part of regular winter maintenance.

In noting snow-clearing crews have done an overall good job cleaning up after the several winter storms to date, Mayor Carolyn Parrish and senior city staff have said in recent weeks that most of the complaints so far — while not many — are related to sod damage caused by sidewalk snowplows.

For more information on Mississauga’s winter maintenance/snow-clearing services, visit the city’s website.

(Graphic: City of Mississauga)


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