On Monday, Feb. 5, a town snowplow crashed on Bald Mountain Road. The driver, Phil Lovett, was taken to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital and released. “He banged up his knees pretty bad on the dashboard and was bruised across the chest from his seatbelt,” said First Selectman Matt Riiska, who visited the scene of the accident immediately.

Lovett had sanded the unpaved portion of the road once already that morning and was returning to lay down one more coat of sand. He lost control on a steep downhill stretch, and the truck went into a protracted skid, first on one side of the road, then on the other, taking out a number of fence posts before slewing around and landing rear-first in the ditch. The truck lost its entire load of sand and leaked about 15 gallons of hydraulic fluid.

Two large wreckers from Arnold’s Garage in North Canaan hoisted the Norfolk dump truck out of the ditch. Meanwhile, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and an environmental company were called in to deal with the contaminants.

The truck, one of six in the town fleet, was a 2005 Sterling. The frame appears to be bent, according to a report by John Allen, supervisor of Public Works, and the truck a total loss. Allen planned to hire an outside contractor to help plow the roads during the next day’s snow storm and has already begun looking for a replacement truck.

“I’d much rather get something secondhand than pay $165,000 for a new one,” said Riiska at a Board of Selectmen meeting on Feb. 6. The truck is insured by CIRMA, the Connecticut Interlocal Risk Management Agency, but it is still unclear how much will be reimbursed.

“We may have to revisit the town’s capital improvement plan,” said Riiska.