Mahnomen County Highway Engineer Talks Snow & Ice Control

Mahnomen, MN — Mahnomen County Highway Engineer Jon Large joined the KRJB Kaleidoscope Program this week to provide more information to the public about the county road system and the people who maintain it. One of the items he discussed was snow and ice control, which has been a challenge this year for their relatively small, 11 employee department. Large says during a snow event, they have 3 trucks that work on removing snow from their more than 135 miles of paved roads throughout the county, pending the visibility allows them to.

Mahnomen County tends to be more conservative when it comes to applying salt to the roadways than perhaps the state. Large says that’s due in part to environmental concerns as well as effectiveness on low traffic areas.

An unfortunate casualty of snow removal tends to be mailboxes, which can either be damaged by the plow itself or as byproduct of the snow being pushed into it. Large says that’s important to note because the County is only responsible for replacing it if the actual truck hits the mailbox.

We’ll have more with Mahnomen County Highway Engineer Jon Large later this week on R & J News, or listen to the full interview from the KRJB Kaleidoscope Program with Jon and Mahnomen County Administrator CJ Holl below.