May 15 to 21 is National Public Works Week! This year, we recognize that Public Works staff are 'Ready & Resilient". Public works professionals are always READY to serve their communities and RESILIENT as ever in their abilities to pick themselves up off the ground after encountering challenges such as the pandemic. The "Ready & Resilient" theme highlights the ability of these professionals to perform regular public works duties and be ready at a moment's notice.
Public works superheroes help keep communities strong by providing an infrastructure of services in transportation, water, wastewater and stormwater treatment, public buildings and spaces, parks and grounds, emergency management and first response, solid waste, and right-of-way management. They are what make our communities great places to live and work. So, join us in celebrating these superheroes!
10 fun facts about Public Works Services
10 fun facts about Public Works Services
- Public Works staff maintain over 340 km of water mains, 3,800 municipality-owned and maintained water vales and 2,266 municipality-owned fire hydrants. To ensure the highest quality of water for our community, Public Works staff test 24 samples of water on a weekly basis for E.coli, other forms of bacteria and contaminants such as lead.
- Our fleet team of mechanics is responsible for repairs and maintenance of all vehicles and equipment used by Town of Newmarket staff. This includes snowplows, sidewalk snow plows, Town of Newmarket cars and trucks, forestry trucks, lawn mowers, zamboni's and more!
- Public Works Staff gave out over 3500+ burlap band kits to help combat Spongy Months this season. Staff continue to collect data on the population and will conduct other prevention measure such as ground spraying for young trees, tree injections for mature trees and more. the Spongy Moth is just one invasive species that our Parks and Forestry staff handle.
- Public Works staff collected over 15,050 lbs of e-waste at the most recent Electronics Recycling Event. Thanks to your efforts, Newmarket is able to divert these items from landfills, recycle valuable raw materials and most importantly, save energy, reduce pollution and minimize greenhouse gasses.
- Public Works staff work around the clock during the winter months to ensure that all roads and sidewalks are salted, sanded and plowed for our community. Last year, they responded to over 59 winter events, which equates to equates to salting and/or plowing 624 km of roads and 453 km of sidewalks and trails for each event.
- Public Works staff completed over 900 work orders to repair and maintain all vehicles and equipment (these include fire trucks, Town vehicles, tractors, grass cutting equipment and more)
- Public Works Staff, using a zamboni, resurfaces more than 61.2 million square feet of ice each winter season to ensure all residents and visitors have a smooth surface to skate on! This is equivalent 594 round trips from Mulock Drive to Green Lane.
- During a non-pandemic year, Public Works Staff help set up and tear down over 70 Town and Community events for everyone to enjoy.
- This year, Newmarket will be planting over 30+ types of flowers/plants that will be blooming all over town - many of which are pollinator friendly to help support Newmarket as the 14th Bee City in Canada 🐝
- The "Quench Buggie" water trailer is officially available for Town events and in short order has received many bookings such as Canada Day, the Farmers Market, Music Series and New'bark'et to name a few. The water trailer has the capacity of 1,000 litres which is expected to replace approximately 2,000 plastic water bottles each time.
