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Plow damage elicits sympathy, but no pledge to reimburse

Logan Township won’t pay for plow damage done during the past two winters to hedges on a Greenwood property, but supervisors apologized and told the owner at a meeting Thursday they’d ask for route adjustments to prevent a recurrence.

For 35 years, the township plowed her narrow road without damaging anything on her corner property on Yale Lane, Marsha Horton told supervisors. But the past two years, plow blades have struck her hedges, eventually taking them out altogether, she said.

There has been no change in the size of the trucks or in the identity of the driver assigned to the neighborhood, but there seems to have been a change in the route used to access that segment of Yale lane, she told supervisors.

The damage occurred when the driver turned onto the lane from Winterberry Street across from her property and swung too wide to clear the hedges, she suggested.

After the damage occurred, she contacted the highway foreman, who came to her property, measured and told her the hedges were in the township right-of-way, Horton said.

That means the township isn’t liable for damages, said solicitor Larry Clapper.

“(Still) there’s no reason for it,” Horton said. “Common decency” dictates that if it can be done without destruction, it ought to be, she said. And the prior record of no damage shows it’s possible, she said.

The supervisors agreed.

“See if we can readjust the route,” said Supervisor Dave Rhoa.

“It will be rectified,” said Chairman Jim Patterson, adding that he doesn’t blame the plow truck driver.

Patterson said he appreciated that Horton made her case without threatening legal action.

One possible reason for the recent damage, after years of no damage, could be the removal of a concrete structure that may have protected the hedges, Horton said.

Horton’s husband, Terry, indicated that he would like to regrow the hedges — despite their being in the right-of-way — to protect the property from drivers generally.

Periodically, plow trucks also damage mailboxes in the township by throwing snow against them, according to township officials.

Rural mailboxes need to be in the right-of-way, so postal workers can reach them from their vehicles, said Township Manager Tim Brown.

Mailboxes are vulnerable, especially the modern plastic kinds that turn brittle when cold, Brown said.

The township doesn’t pay for mailbox damage either, Brown said.

It’s virtually impossible for all plow truck drivers to avoid mailbox damage all the time, but they can minimize the risk by using moderate speeds and being especially cautious when snow is wet and heavy, according to Patterson, who drove a plow truck for two years for PennDOT.

A driver who knocks down 20 mailboxes in a row along a stretch of highway is doing something wrong, he said.

Plowed snow can be “devastating,” he said, recalling an instance during his tenure at PennDOT when thrown snow took the siding off a house in the Tipton area.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.

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