Curbside recycling canceled in Columbia; plow crews on-duty since 5 am

A 30-person plow crew from Columbia Public Works arrived for duty at 5 Thursday morning, and is focusing on treating first and second priority roads. Crews have been pretreating Columbia bridges, intersections, hills and curves this week with salt and salt brine.

As for Columbia Utilities, spokesman Matt Nestor tells 939 the Eagle that his department has additional crews on standby today for the potential of downed power lines.

“We have a crew on-hand for any immediate problems, they can go out and do that. But if there’s any widespread outages, everybody who’s in the area who can respond will be on call to respond,” Nestor says.

He says Columbia’s Solid Waste Utility will run residential curbside refuse collection routes on Thursday and Friday, as scheduled. Curbside recycling has been canceled.

“That way we can concentrate all of our residential collection staff on the trash collection that limits the number of routes that each of those crews has to run, which will limit their exposure to the elements,” says Nestor.

Mr. Nestor emphasizes that Columbia Utilities takes the safety of its crews seriously, and will continue to monitor the weather.