Although DeKalb has been experiencing fair weather for January, the NIU Physical Plant is prepared for the worst with a $600,000 budget at their disposal.

Funds for snow removal are included in the general budget, which includes the salaries of employees working Monday through Friday for seven-and-a-half hours a day.

Tom Anderson, grounds department foreman, said the department does not focus on clearing snow, but if it does snow, that is their first priority. “We have sixty acres of parking, twelve miles of streets and twenty-eight miles of sidewalk to be cleared away if snowfall does occur,” he said.

Among the reasons for this season’s mild winter is because the jet stream traveling over Illinois has split, said Mike Torregnossa of the NIU Weather Service. “The northern section of the split is keeping the cold air away from Illinois and the southern part of the stream is bringing warm air up from the south,” he said.

When snow falls, the department usually uses about 20 employees to remove the snow. About fifteen pieces of equipment are used to remove snow, ranging from street plows and sidewalk plows to street salters to dumptrucks.

Anderson said the first priority is to clear the fire lanes and streets, and this takes about 24 hours. “The worst time to remove snow is when it starts to snow between 5:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.,” he said, explaining that there is not enough time to move the snow off the sidewalks and streets before students begin to move around the campus.

The NIU grounds crew and the DeKalb Department of Streets and Sanitation do not work together to remove snow.

Physical plant funds come from the state legislature and student fees, and is distributed to the physical plant for materials, equipment, supplies and labor, he said. The money is also used for the upkeep of the academic buildings, campus offices, lawns and the library.

The physical plant is given about the same amount of money each year, Harrod said, but they continue to look for ways to streamline costs. They have recently bought a mower with an 18-foot blade that can mow a field that would normally take two days in four to five hours.

“We don’t know what is going to happen, but we do budget some money for overtime and extra help,” he said. “There was a water main break recently on campus and we had to call in workers during the night to repair it,” he said.