What About Next Winter's Significant Snowfall? And The Following Winter?

The amount of snow that DPW and outside help dumped in the Firestation lot on Washington Street over the past two days from every street in the city is really impressive.  (Pictures can't convey how massive that pile is.)  I haven't seen a mound of snow there that large in several years.  What will be more impressive -- and should be to every Hudson resident -- is if DPW can do the same thing next year (and for the four years following) when the Pocketbook Hudson Hotel and Baths people have taken over most of the lot for their leased parking lot on city property.  I don't see how it would be possible for DPW to manage it, though.

If there are any astute members on next year's Common Council who are actually interested in the future of Hudson, one of them would ask DPW Superintendent Rob Perry (and possibly Fire Chief Shawn Hoffman) the following questions at the year's first informal meeting:  "Were you informed last October or November that the Pocketbook Hotel would be signing a 5-year lease with the city to build a parking lot that would cover most of the Firestation lot on Washington Street?  Are you at all glad that a private parking lot will take over most of that city lot?  Did you give your approval for the leasing of that city land for the next five years and likely more, possibly in perpetuity?  Will the Pocketbook's parking lot make things easier or more difficult for your department in regard to snow dumping and storage or any other possible emergencies requiring open space?  How much have you depended on that open lot?  Do you not need it anymore?  Where are you going to dump snow, possibly lots of it like you did late last year, if not in that lot?  If you have a plan, were you going to inform us of it had you not been asked to?

Yesterday: a DPW employee inside an idling, diesel-burning earth/snow mover waiting for another diesel-burning dump truck full of snow to arrive.  This piece of machinery allows snow to be piled high, preventing the dumped snow from taking up lots more space, perhaps the entire lot.   

Above and below, yesterday on North 5th Street:  Five diesel-burning dump trucks creeping along, waiting their turn behind a dump truck being filled by DPW's snow eater.  This went on (mostly in the dark) for much of past two days on every city street!  The final diesel-burning truck in line was about to cross State Street.  All of this in response to just 9 inches of snow, much of which had melted or been removed by rain by the time the removal effort was started.  Notice, below, how little of it was in the street (some streets had more, of course)!

The amount of fuel consumed (and paid for!), as well as greenhouse gases, particulate matter and other nasty things spewed into the atmosphere and our lungs in response to last week's 9 inches of snow is on the level of absurdity.  Frightening absurdity.  It can only be described as unsustainable, planet-destroying behavior.  Unsustainable for planet earth and for humankind.  The fact of the matter is that our planet would have been made uninhabitable long ago if all humans from time immemorial had always responded to snow as we have been doing for just the past 75 years or so since cars, trucks, asphalt and concrete began covering the earth, particularly here in the United States.  We can't continue down this road for much longer.  The toll is much too costly.