I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
Jan. 14, 1997
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
Snow. It falls, accumulates and makes the lives of travelers miserbable. And lately, there has been enough snow to irritate the most gentle of souls. But what happens next? Where does the snow go?
According to Mike Barclay, Bemidji street and maintenance supervisor, after the snow is loaded onto trucks, it is hauled away to one of four dumping sites around Bemidji.
The snow removal process starts soon after a snowfall. Usually, the outskirts of town are cleaned as soon as possible, allowing the downtown businesses a day to shovel themselves out before the snow is hauled out.
Then, the first night after the snowfall, the downtown streets are cleaned, and from that point on, streets are cleared in order of importance -- starting with Bemidji Avenue.
Afterward, the snow is hauled to the dumping sites. There are dumping sites west of Bemidji on Fifth and 15th streets, and one located near the curling rink, behind Kentucky Fried Chicken. the fourth is near Northwest Technical College- Bemidji. And if needed, there is a fifth spot in the industrial complex, Barclay said.
One might think the sites are in danger of filling up this winter, with the 40-plus inches of white stuff Bemidji has received already, but Barclay said there is no chance of that happening.
"We have unofficially received six to eight inches more than last year at this time, but we won't fill (the dumps) up," he said. "They are big, and there is a lot of snow in them. But we will never fill these dumps.
"This time of year, (snow removal) takes a little longer because we can't push the snow anywhere. We just don't have the room on the streets as we did earlier," he said. "It gets hectic when you get this much snow. The last two years are the worst I have seen, and I have lived here all my life."
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