Last week was a busy one for the Jefferson Public Works Department.

Crews not only spent all day fixing a water main break in town on Monday, they also had to handle snow removal and fixing a backed up sewer line for the Jefferson VFW Hall. Public Works Director Dave Morlan says dealing with all of the issues in the winter time can be an even greater challenge when they are shorthanded on staff.

“People still have winter vacations that they want to go do, there’s still family emergencies that come up, and it snows so we still have got to be there and get our job done. And when we are short, we just pull from other areas of the city. There’s a Thursday not too long ago that a couple of people were off and we had to pick up snow uptown and we had a garbage route that we needed to cover, the city administrator volunteered to come out and help us out there. We just pull from where we need to and get it done.”

Morlan points out that even water main breaks are more frequent in the winter time.

“They happen any time of the day or night. They happen during the week and on the weekends. I think that we’ve had one or two of them this year that have been on the weekends, and we’ve gone in and fixed them. And then we had this last one, this last week on Monday that was found at 4am and it was all day long from 5am to 5:30pm job to get it fixed.”

Morlan appreciates everyone’s help when they are in a pinch to get jobs done, especially during the winter season.