Berkeley Lake Residents Still Digging Out From the Storm

It's day six since Mother Nature dumped over a half a foot of snow on metro Atlanta, and while many streets in the area are virtually dry and easily passable, some of the roads in Berkeley Lake are still icy leaving its residents a slippery trip to the grocery store and beyond.

A major contributing factor is the abundance of trees in the city -- something which the majority of homewowners consider one of their town's greatest attributes. The fact that many of the winding roads in the city were still covered in ice on Saturday afternoon was just a fact of life for Mark Collins, a Berkeley Lake resident for the past 24 years.

"Around here we are a bunch of tree huggers," said Collins rather proudly and not seeming at all pertubed about the back-breaking work of chopping up and shoveling the ice off of his long winding driveway which he's been working on for the past two to three days.

He patted his goose-necked snow shoval which he's had for some 20 years saying "This is the best 20 bucks I've ever spent."

Like the majority of folks in Berkeley Lake it seems that despite the apparent drawback of the city's tree-lined streets, the lingering ice was just another consequence of Mother Nature to deal with.

After all, Berkeley Lake's designation of "Tree City USA" by the Arbor Day Foundation is a source of great pride for this town of some 2,000 residents.

Along with the trees, is the 88-acre lake which is the centerpiece for this community and an important amenity to protect as well which is why residents avoid using salt to clear their driveways and walkways because of the runoff to the lake.

Residents know the weather will soon warm up, the ice will melt and all of this fuss over the ice will disappear as well. Berkeley Lake folks have always seemed to take things in stride. And they've got bigger issues to be concerned with, when the city gets back to operations as usual, the looming concern is still the damaged dam and figuring out a way to pay for the repairs.