Amherst, N.Y. (WBEN) - While every Western New Yorker is gearing up for the projected snow storm expected to arrive Thursday, our local towns are still looking to clear as many leaves as they can before the snow falls.
"Yes, there is an urgency to pick up as many leaves as we can and we are doing that," says Patrick Lucey, Superintendent of Highways for the Town of Amherst. "We've been working overtime all week and we will continue to do that until tomorrow evening. Then the trucks will be outfitted for snow removal."
With regards to the snow coming, "We're really not going to salt too much because it's going to be a waste. It's just going to be plowed off a few hours later. So again, we're concentrating on the leaves now. We are working late today, late tomorrow."
Lucey says most of the town's large trucks are involved in leaf pickup now and the time it would take to attach the plows to all their trucks with the hookups to do so, would take about an hour.
Lucey is hoping for less than 2 feet of snow, because anything above would be a very tall task, but manageable, "We will be able to handle even four feet but it's going to take time. Fortunately it's a weekend and if people stay off the roads and don't park on the roads, it'll make our jobs that much easier."
After the snowstorm, Lucey plans on the town to finish picking up any leaves that may be missed, "It usually takes us the entire month of November to clean up the town. We're just over halfway through now so as you can believe, there are still a lot of leaves out there that we're not going to get to by tomorrow, but we will be back and we will continue to pick them up after the snowstorm."
