Price tag for Saskatoon snow storm cleanup estimated to be $10-15 million: city manager

Clearing all of Saskatoon streets from last week's snow storm will likely cost the city between $10-15 million.

City manager Jeff Jorgenson said the price tag is based on previous cost estimates the city has done for city council.

Jorgenson said they are still in the process of estimating the final clean-up cost, and much will depend on how much snow needs to be hauled away.

"The significant part of the cost is actually going to be in the removal," he said.

"When we go to actually pick up the snow and haul away with trucks, that's going to take a lot longer [than grading the streets] and a lot of internal city staff and contractor resources to make that happen." 

Clearing the streets is going better than anticipated and all residential streets should be graded before Friday.

Hauling all the snow piles to the city's three snow storage facilities will take a lot longer.

"But we do want to be fairly aggressive about it too," Jorgenson said. "The sooner we get that snow gone, that just gives everybody more storage because we're going to get a lot more snow through the winter."

Terry Schmidt, the city's general manager of Transportation and Construction, said 28 neighbourhoods had been cleared by Sunday morning.

Another 20 neighbourhoods will have been completed or work under way by Monday morning.

That would mean about 75 per cent of the residential neighbourhoods will have been cleared. 

"Many neighbourhoods have been bumped up the schedule," Schmidt said. "Should this continue, we're estimating bringing mobility back to every residential neighborhood sooner than the original plan date of Friday this week."

Schmidt said crews will continue to work around the clock this week until all streets have been cleared.

The residential clearing schedule is available on the City of Saskatoon's website.

Schmidt cautioned it is a very fluid schedule and subject to change based on weather conditions, and contractor availability and production.

There are about 200 city workers and 100 contractors working to clear the snow.

Saskatoon Transit is operating on regular schedules with a few minor disruptions on several routes that are not related to the snowstorm.