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As the sun hangs in the sky a little longer with each passing day, the remains of winter have all but melted away, along with memories of the seven-month-long season. Though ice and snow disappear at the first sign of sunlight, one residual of winter can be seen throughout the Kenai Peninsula Borough -- sand.

"The more sand you put down, the more you have to take up later," said Wayne Ogle, Kenai's public works director. Ogle said the city spreads anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 cubic yards of sand each year.

A typical dump truck can hold between 10 and 12 cubic yards of sand. So any given winter, 300 to 700 dump truck loads of sand will be spread throughout the city of Kenai.

Steve Bonebrake, Soldotna's public works director, said anywhere from 100 to 1,000 cubic yards are scattered throughout Soldotna. The state of Alaska typically distributes 25,000 to 30,000 cubic yards of sand on the peninsula.

In total, any given year the peninsula has between 30,000 and 40,000 cubic yards of sand spread on its roads.

That's 3,000 to 4,000 dump truck loads.

This past winter, the city of Soldotna spread about 500 cubic yards of sand, Bonebrake said.

"It depends on what Mother Nature throws at us and what the needs are," he said.

For the seven months the city spreads sand, it takes about a month to collect it.

Bonebrake said there are days that sand must be applied in the morning to ensure road safety and by the afternoon it becomes a dust problem.

In total, Soldotna maintains 37 miles of roadways.

Sand has one major feature which makes it ideal for winter roads in Alaska -- traction.

"It's kind of funny. Instead of slowing people down, we make it safer for them to go fast," Bonebrake said.

Cold, windless days are best for spreading sand, Ogle said. When it's snowing or the wind is blowing hard, sand won't help road conditions as the snow will cover it up and the wind will blow it away.

The recent spell of warm weather has led to one of the earliest starts to sand clean-up operations, Ogle said. Once the first signs of summer come out, so too do the calls come in about sand removal and dust issues.

To control dust problems, calcium chloride is spread on gravel roads. This solidifies the gravel particles with the sand particles, making the two hard and compact, Ogle said.

"The dust is pretty well eliminated," he said.

"The best thing is to sweep on a rainy day," said Doug Schoessler, borough road director. "(The dust) is kind of a hazard."

Downtown Kenai is first on the list for sand clean up, Ogle said. Because the snow is plowed into the roads' right of way, most of the sand is there, too. The sand is swept out of the grass onto the sidewalk and collected from there.

Then the neighborhoods are cleared.

Once the sand is removed, it's taken to a sand berm where Kenai also stores spoils picked up from the boat harbor, Ogle said. When the water dries out, the sand and spoils are dumped in a local landfill.

Ogle said the sand isn't reused because the heavy vehicle traffic leaves behind oil products, dirtying the sand.

Kenai purchases its sand from the airport, Ogle said.

Unlike the cities, the borough doesn't deal too much with sand collecting.

"Whatever we put out pretty much stays in place," Schoessler said. He said most sand can be left on the road because 98 percent of the borough's roads are gravel.

Schoessler said the amount of sand the borough spreads each year is difficult to estimate because contractors do all of the work.

Clarion photographer M. Scott Moon contributed to this report.

Mike Nesper can be reached at mike.nesper@peninsulaclarion.com.