ODOT has familiar problem: No place to put all that snow

Amid a very snowy winter challenging Central Oregonians in various ways, the Oregon Department of Transportation in Bend said Wednesday it’s encountered a problem very familiar to many home and property owners: It’s run out of places to dump all that snow along U.S. Highway 20 and will have to truck it elsewhere.

ODOT’s winter highway maintenance operations along Highway 20 in Bend (Northeast Third and Greenwood Avenue) have yielded so much snow that the agency said it’s run out of room in the highway right of way. So it has hired a local company to remove it to a safer storage area.

“We’ve simply run out of space to put snow on the sides of the highway and have to move it to maintain safe driving conditions.,” said ODOT Transportation Maintenance Manager Tim McGinnis.

ODOT spokesman Peter Murphy said the snow will be moved to a vacant area south of the Highway 20 Sisters overpass, where highways 20 and 97 meet.

Snow transfer operations will begin Thursday night at 7 p.m. and continue until 5 a.m. for five days, ODOT said.

Workers will close lanes along those streets as necessary and traffic control will be in place, officials added.