May 21st to May 27th is National Public Works Week. Public Works professionals help maintain and support our community infrastructure by providing a wide variety of services, including transportation, wastewater, solid waste, road maintenance, engineering and administration, and even maintenance of the County’s fleet of vehicles.
“Our Public Works team works quietly behind the scenes on some of our community’s most important infrastructure. If you drive on it, ride on it, throw it away, or flush it, that’s Public Works!” said Heba El-Guindy, Nevada County’s Public Works Director.
Learn more about some of the projects our incredible team is working on!
Wastewater: There are 10 zones within the Sanitation District with 110 miles of underground pipeline delivering 1,245,000 gallons of wastewater to treatment facilities each day. The Sanitation District provides sewer service to 5,230 accounts, or about 14,000 people living in Western Nevada County. “The team at Nevada County Sanitation is dedicated to this cause and does amazing work,” Brad Torres, Wastewater Operations Manager.
Roads Division: The Roads Division has a Signs Department that monitors 7,350 signs on 561 miles of County roads. The sign crew makes 90% of the road signs in-house. “We go north, south, east, and west. We have thousands upon thousands of signs. There is always something to do in our sign department,” said Kelly Moyer, who has been working for Nevada County for 16 years. She started out with the Roads maintenance crew driving trucks.
Fleet: Our Fleet team services over 550 vehicles that travel approximately 2 million miles per year! Even during the bleakest of days, these guys keep the snowplows running, the transit busses on their routes, 95 Sheriff’s Office vehicles (including Search & Rescue off-road snowcats) ready to assist, AND all our department cars on the road. They work tirelessly and at times around the clock! “We say from A to Z, we service everything in-house. We all kind of work on everything. I think Fleet is the heartbeat behind other departments,” said Josh Hylinski, Fleet Manager.
Engineering and Administration: This team works tirelessly to improve infrastructure and make critical safety improvements throughout the County. Recently, they have been working with partners on improvements to Donner Pass Road, which will upgrade one of the oldest roads in the County as well as enhance recreational experiences along the stunningly beautiful and historic Donner Pass Road.
Transit: Nevada County Transit employs 16 full-time and 12 temporary positions. This team is excited to announce that Nevada County will soon have two 35-foot electric zero-emission buses in its fleet! Staff will begin to train on these in late this summer. That’s good news for our air quality, as these zero-emission buses will help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become a more climate-resilient community.
Solid Waste: This division is made up of two individuals. They work closely with Waste Management to keep the Transfer Station on McCourtney Road operating year-round. On May 1st, they broke ground on the McCourtney Road Improvement Project. Major highlights include improving the transfer station’s capacity and efficiency by providing more unloading bays, creating a new access road and entrance scale facilities to reduce wait time and traffic and improving site circulation to provide easier access to items like green waste disposal.
