NIU and the DeKalb County Highway Department continued to remove snow from Wednesday night’s snowfall for several days.

NIU’s Physical Plant is in charge of roads, streets, parking lots and sidewalks on campus, said Tom Anderson, Physical Plant grounds foreman. Plowing begins when there is at least two inches of snow on the ground, he said.

The highway department, which plows county roads outside the city limits, does not take inches into consideration.

“Whenever there’s snow starting to accumulate on the roads, we start plowing,” said Superintendent of Highways Clifford Adams, adding the crews work straight until the snow is cleared.

NIU snow removal crews begin plowing at midnight and keep working until the job is done, Anderson said.

At NIU, handicapped parking lots are top priority, Anderson said.

As of 1 p.m. Friday, Anderson’s crew was still working to clear Wednesday’s snowfall from the alleyways of the student parking lots.

The lots are the most difficult area to clean because “sometimes students park ther cars in the student parking lots all winter,” Anderson said.

Since the cars stay parked, the best the Physical Plant employees can do is clean out behind them, Anderson said. On weekends they can do a better job plowing the parking lots because many students go home for the weekend, he said.

However, NIU’s commuter lots are easier to clear because people come and go. “All of the commuter lots are pretty clean,” Anderson said.

The Physical Plant has two street plows, five tractors with loaders, four sidewalk plows and two small snowblowers, Anderson said.

The plant uses a salt and sand mixture in their two street salters and one sidewalk salter, he said.

As of Friday, the DeKalb highway department cleared the east and west county roads, while the north and south roads needed to be plowed again, Adams said.

The department was still plowing because of the wind, which causes drifting and accumulation on the roads, Adams said. Cars driving on fresh snow also make plowing difficult because they pack the snow down, making the roads slippery, he said.

The highway department has 10 routes, each covering 20 miles, Adams said. One person plows each route and the department has 10 plows, he said.