The city of Houghton Public Works comprises 12 heavy equipment operators, 2 heavy equipment mechanics that can function as operators when called upon, one Leadman I, one Leadman II, and the director.

Each operator may perform several duties as well. For example the director and two certified operators perform daily operations at the City owned water filtration plant. The water plant has a maximum pumpage of 2 Million gallons per day.

The plant went on-line in 1997. It's intent was to filter the ground water in which the City had a problem with high levels of iron and manganese.

Other operators have a high level of carpentry and construction skills, which help in the construction of the various types of waterfront boardwalks. The City has a total of 4.25 miles of paved walking/running tails and another mile of elevated boardwalk.

Public works operators maintain 10.35 miles of major streets and 20.71 miles of local streets. Maintenance consists of cold patching potholes, line striping, cleaning catch basins and sweeping. Crews also build approximately 500 - 1500 feet of new streets almost yearly. During street construction, crews install all of our own water and sewer main along with the necessary drainage. Upon completion, the necessary testing is done to the mains. Last year the City purchased a television camera for inspecting sewer mains because of the increasing cost for sewage treatment. The City's attention has focused on ground water infiltration and/or storm water not separated from the sewer. Crews are televising sewer mains throughout the year, and the problem areas are repaired by Public Works crews.

When we are not road building or repairing leaks, we spend a good part of 5 months plowing snow and keeping streets nice and wide. Our equipment consists of two graders, two sno-gos, two uni-mog plows, one loader with a plow/wing assembly, three 4x4 sanders, and one small articulated 4x4 sidewalk machine.

Other equipment in our fleet includes two backhoes, one Drott excavator, three loaders, two single axle dump trucks, and five tandem axle dump trucks. Several pick-up trucks, and various other small equipment.