UNE eases Portland’s ever growing burden of white fluffy stuff
On February 19, 2015, WMTW (Channel 8) aired a news segment on the helping hand that the University of New England is lending to the City of Portland in contending with the problem of where to put the massive amounts of snow that have been removed from city streets. UNE has agreed to allow the city to use its Portland Campus’s satellite parking lot on Bishop Street as a dump site for the snow.
The new dump site comes at an important time for Portland, as the snow dump on outer Congress Street near the Portland Jetport is nearing the height limit allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and with winter far from over, use of the Bishop Street lot will allow city officials to breathe easier.
Bill Bola, UNE’s vice president for Operations, was interviewed for the WMTW report, remarking, "We’ve had an awful lot of snow in a very short period of time…We live in Maine, and I think we should help each other out and make the most of it."
The agreement between the University and the City of Portland was also mentioned in a February 18 article in the Portland Press Herald, which reported that as of the publication date, Portland had received 80 inches of snow thus far this winter.