The Highway Department is responsible for the maintenance, drainage and snow plowing for all 196 miles of paved roads and 26.18 miles of gravel roads throughout Town. Besides the obvious basics of paving and plowing, Highway: cleans catch basins, sprays guide rails for weed control, repairs guide rails, sweeps, grades gravel roads, maintains drainage, plants trees, clears downed trees and branches, installs drainage, repairs and conducts preventative maintenance on Town vehicles, installs flags, beaver dam removal, installs and replaces signs, line stripes, patches potholes, fixes and installs curbing, responds to CSR’s [459 this year], rakes, seeds and hays new drainage installations, and mows roadsides, just to name a few daily jobs.

Below is a list of regular maintenance items that we perform:

Ø      guardrail weed spraying

Ø      paving

Ø      sweeping – including multiple sweepings of the Downtown and other areas by 2   to 3 sweepers, water truck and haul trucks. This accounts for all     roads     in New Milford being swept at least once by the end of spring.

Ø      64+ acres of mowing and brush cutting

Ø      1,050  catch basins were cleaned

Ø      1,479 CY of various stone for gravel roads was used to repair gravel roads. This is a significant decrease from previous years due to the new application and process described below. Last years process used on gravel roads alone was 12,043 CY.

Ø      Highway continued with the crack sealing process along various roads as well.

This year the Highway department made their own process by using materials reclaimed in the yard as well as many applications of Envirobrine to the surface to help bind the process together. The practice of adding Envirobrine has been used before, but this year highway continued the practice after every grading instead of just in the spring and fall. The success was measured by the firmness of the gravel road surfaces even after a heavy rainfall.

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