Michigan city uses underground hot water pipes to melt snow away from streets, sidewalks
HOLLAND, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - There's no snow shoveling needed along the sidewalks in downtown Holland.
The West Michigan city, known for its annual tulip festival and celebrations of Dutch cultural heritage, gets about 70 inches of snow a year because of its location along Lake Michigan.
The city also has the largest publicly-owned snowmelt system in North America.
Holland operates a public gas-fired electric power plant, which provides electricity to city residents and beyond; and that's the key to a public utility that gets national attention from time to time.
Waste heat from the Holland Board of Public Works power plant produces 95-degree water that circulates through 190 miles of tubing under sidewalks and even some streets in the center of the city. The underground heating helps maintain pedestrian access to parks, the county courthouse, sidewalks at the library and ramps to a parking deck.
"No salting, no plowing, no slipping or sliding," city officials said.
The snow melt network as it is currently designed can melt about one inch of snow per hour at 20 degrees Fahrenheit with winds of 10 mph, city officials said.
The snowmelt system launched in 1988, at first thawing out just a couple of blocks. The network has been expanded many times since. In its earlier years, the system used water from Lake Macatawa. Starting in 2016, the closed system was switched to potable water to prevent sediment from wearing on system valves.
In addition to the public snowmelt network, about 190,000 square feet of privately owned snowmelt systems also have been installed around Holland.
