Dear editor:

This issue has no doubt been raised before. We have an aging population, a lot of us in our 70s who find it increasingly difficult to shovel windrows (ridges of snow) thrown on the entrance of our driveways by regional and town snow removal equipment.

Some of us have health issues which prevent us from doing strenuous activities leading to back issues and more.

There have been suggestions from Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake officials that people can hire contractors to clear windrows, but that assumes everyone has the means to do so. We also have a lot of women living alone in this town.

There is equipment available that has gates/flippers to trap the snow, preventing it from being dumped on driveway entrances.

If the snow removal authorities don’t have and can’t afford this kind of equipment because of priorities perhaps they could send front-end loader operators to help residents living on regional roads and in town.

This is what was done in Winnipeg when I lived there and where it is still the practice. This could be an alternative to sending out employees with snow removal equipment that incessantly throws snow on the driveways where residents are trying to clear their entrances.

I saw a woman throwing her hands in the air when a plow shoved the snow back on her entrance. I also observed an octogenarian helping a septuagenarian friend living alone clearing the entrance of her driveway.

An alternative would be a user-pay windrow program offered by some municipalities, such as Oakville. The fee there is about $100 a year.

Parts of the GTA, including Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and areas of Toronto and East York also have snow removal alternatives. They are the envy of other GTA where windrow services are not offered.

This may be the case of comparing apples and oranges but different means should be investigated by snow removal planners in NOTL and Niagara Region.

This past week, in reply to an email Lord Mayor Betty Disero questioned whether the amount of snow that fell (about 50 centimetres in some areas between Jan. 16 and 17), would benefit from windrow elimination techniques. They worked on the street in Toronto where I lived from 2007 to 2011 before I became a ‘’NOTLer.’’

The mayor followed up with an email from Bruce Zvaniga, Niagara Region's commissioner of public works.

His response to “driveway plow gates’’ was that the emphasis after a storm is on clearing roads quickly (sometimes with multiple passes). By the time roads are done, “many people have cleared their own driveways before the crews can come back and use the gated plow approach.’’

He added that plow gates/flippers add to the mechanical complexity of the plow and therefore tend to increase maintenance requirements and damage susceptibility.

At this point, Zvaniga said he can’t advocate for an additional tax increase for the few big winter storms we endure but he did say climate change and technological advances could change that.

Gilbert Comeault

NOTL