Rockland Daily Tours New Highway Department Facility Before First Snowstorm of the Season

By M.C. Millman

Rockland Daily toured the new County Highway Department Depot in Chestnut Ridge, which opened this fall as reported by Rockland Daily here, as it is preparing for its first snow removal effort this weekend. 

"The whole facility we have here,"  Skip Vezzetti, Rockland County Highway Supervisor, who welcomed Rockland Daily to the facility during the tour, "is state-of-the-art. Actually, the whole facility itself is state-of-the-art as everything we have here is not only state-of-the-art but environmentally sound as we have the most modern equipment available. I don't think there's another facility in the state, or even in the country, that is as up-to-date or as operationally modern as this particular facility."

The new full-service $40 million 114,500 square foot facility houses all snow removal equipment. Located at 26 Scotland Hill Road in Chestnut Ridge, the 24 acres facility, purchased from the New York State Department of Transportation, is extensive enough to keep all of its vehicles inside the building, saving taxpayers money as indoor storage adds twenty percent to the life of the over twenty-million-dollar fleet due to less exposure to the elements and leading to less frequent equipment replacements overall. The building also has a truck washing station, which is especially important after salting roads. 

"The salt and magnesium chloride are highly corrosive," the Highway Supervisor shares, "and it's critical to ensure that vehicles are extremely clean."

"We try to be good neighbors," Vezzetti says, "so we’ve taken in some salt for the Towns of Ramapo and Orangetown, storing all their excess salt too. All of this results in lower maintenance costs."

The highway supervisor also said that the facility is so well stocked that it should be able to respond to emergencies for up to two weeks without any outside assistance. 

The facility has room to store ten thousand tons of salt, so there is little chance of running out over the winter. It is located at the center of Rockland's southern service area, leading to faster emergency reaction time and snow removal for the seventeen plow routes servicing Ramapo, Clarkstown, and Orangetown.