AUBURN – City crews are having a harder time this year sweeping up the sand used to keep winter roads clear, officials say.

“It was a heavy winter to start with, and then we used more sand because of the road salt shortages,” said Christina White, Auburn’s executive assistant. “People don’t realize that there was three times the amount of leftover sand on the roads this year, compared to last year, and it’s taking them longer to get it cleaned up.”

White said city crews have completed sweeping along main arteries and in the urban core and any road where road construction or paving is scheduled. Now they are moving to the outer neighborhoods and expect to be finished by next week.

“We’re getting calls from people who think we’ve forgotten about them, but we haven’t,” she said.

City crews actually got a head start on the road sweeping this year, beginning on April 1 instead of April 15.

“The problem is, there are 11 trucks that spread sand in the winter and they can carry between 7 and 12 cubic yards each trip,” White said. “But we only have three sweepers and they hold up to three cubic yards per trip. So it’s taking them longer than expected.”

Public Works crews also had to stop sweeping operations for three weeks in May for the annual spring trash collections.

“Whether they wrap up next week or not really depends on the weather,” she said. “If we get heavy rains or high winds and crews need to go clear fallen trees or something else, that will pull them off of street sweeping. But they’re working on it.”