Town Blizzard Cleanup Cost Estimated at $800,000

continued to recover Tuesday from the that parked an estimated 15 inches of snow on the area.

Plows were operating Tuesday, though Town of Huntington Highway superintendent said that since snow is continuing to melt, the work should be mostly complete Wednesday. He estimated the cost of the cleanup so far to be $800,000.

Residents can call the highway department's hotline with complaints at 631-499-0444. But the phone system was knocked out by a power outage, as it had previously, he said, adding that the system was installed nearly 30 years ago.

About 280 pieces of equipment were on the road at the height of the storm, with another nine workers at the department's four sites.

Many factors complicate snow removal, Naughton said,  "But putting snow back in the street is by far the biggest problem. This is the worst where there are a lot of cars parked on the roads and then the residents shovel the snow into the street and it gets driven on, and packed in, and then it is not possible to plow properly.

"The other big problem with this past storm was the wind. The wind kept putting the snow back on the roads after they were plowed; there was a lot of drifting snow."

Naughton credited town employees and outside contractors, many of whom worked 30 hours over two days. He also said Tuesday that he would "like to thank the residents of the town for being patient with us. We lost our main office phone service for most of the storm, it was restored at about 10 a.m. this morning. This led to communication problems between our offices and also with the public. This has happened before and we hope we can make sure it does not happen again."

Town Supervisor praised town workers, saying he appreciates "the hard work and dedication of all the people, representing many town departments, who came in starting at around noon Sunday and worked long hours to make sure that roads were passable and that our communications links were maintained."

His office said that the town had about $1 million in the snow contingency fund, after transferring some money from vacancy savings into the fund back in May, so had sufficient funds to pay for the snow removal.