Philly Streets Commissioner Says Center City Snow Must Be Carted Far Afield
By Steve Tawa
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- In the canyons of the tall buildings around Philadelphia City Hall, all that snow has to go somewhere.
According to city officials, crews are "lifting" it -- carting it away.
Streets commissioner David Perri says that to the west of City Hall -- including along Market, Arch, and Race Streets, and JFK Boulevard between 15th and 17th Streets -- there is nowhere to put the 13 to 14 inches of snow that blanketed the streets yesterday.
"We bring in trucks and front-end loaders, and we literally haul the snow out to a remote location," he said today.
Whether they conduct a snow-lifting operation depends on how much snow falls, and also on after-storm temperatures, which this time around will be incredibly low for the rest of the week.
Perri says the snow won't melt anytime soon, so they are taking it to an undisclosed location.
"We don't want to make it public because we don't want contractors bringing snow from private parking lots and dumping it there also," Perri said today.
After a record 30-inch snowfall in 1996 and another massive storm in 2003, city officials ran out of options to put the snow and, as a last resort, got permission from the state Department of Environmental Protection to dump some of it into the Schuylkill River.
Perri says that won't happen again.
"We don't want to cause any pollution issues," he said.
