Harry Nespoli, who has been a sanitation worker since 1970 and president of the Uniformed Sanitation men’s Association for the past two years, talked last week with The New York Sun’s Julia Levy about clearing the snow.

Q. Did you ever run a plow?

A. Sure. Are you kidding me? For 10 years, and also loaded a truck for 10 years.

What’s it like?

You’ve got to be very careful when you plow, because there are parked cars all over the place, and they kind of blend in with a heavy storm. You’ve got to be sure that you open up the street, and also the fact that you don’t rip anybody’s personal car along with you. And they’re long hours. They’re 12-hour shifts….First they plow up maybe 3 inches on the ground, and then they send you out with the plow on certain routes, which will cover your route, which will open up those streets and keep them open for the emergency services, such as police and firemen and ambulances.

Do you actually watch the weather on TV to figure out when your workers will be busy? How accurate are weather forecasts?

The department uses a certain weather forecast and they’re very, very accurate. Being a sanitation man and the president of the union, I always listen to all the weather, because I got to be concerned about if we’re really going to get hit by a storm, if the department is going to turn around and cancel the men’s day off to go to work. Also, the fact that how much snow is coming and when it’s going to hit. When it hits is important. If the storm hits in the middle of the week, we’ve got a problem because we have people trying to get around, the cars trying to move. …We’re going to be working to make sure that the public can get to work and that the city doesn’t lose any revenue on Monday morning.

Do you think TV goes overboard covering snowstorms and other weather events?

Oh, without a doubt. This is the time when everybody recognizes the sanitation workers because they really rely on them. A lot of the people recognize that we turn around and we open up the streets for them and everything like that. And they know, you know? During the summertime, they’re not really concerned about it. All we’re doing then is blocking up traffic. But this is the time when they recognize us.

So winter is sort of the heroic time of year for sanitation workers?

Yes it is. But we were involved in 9/11.They kind of rely on the sanitation department for a lot of emergencies.

We were involved in that West Nile cleanup. So anything that becomes an eyesore out there, they know that this workforce is here, they can rely on for whatever they ask us to do.

How do you balance snow-plowing with trash-collecting?

You come in. You go to work. You do your job. That’s what it’s about. The idea is to come to work and to catch up. You have to catch up that collection – what they call catching up the collection. That’s the toughest part of a storm is after you’re done opening up the streets and the snow, you’ve got to pick up the collection that you haven’t been picking up all along, and physically that’s tough.

How soon after it starts to snow do sanitation workers go to work?

About three inches on the ground. You need snow on the ground to drop the plows. But you also have 353 salt spreaders that you have to go out and lay a layer of salt around also. So before that couple inches are out there, you’re out there dropping a layer of salt.

Which streets are the hardest to clean up?

Down at the Heights, what they call the Heights. Downtown Brooklyn. Pineapple Street, Montague Street, and streets like that, that are small narrow streets that you can just about get a collection truck down there on a normal day collection. Now you have to go down there with a plow on the front of it. And then when you try to make a turn, now you’ve got to back that vehicle up.

How many times a year on average does someone end up hitting a car that’s piled under some snow?

We’re getting pretty good at it right now. It doesn’t happen that often anymore. When everyone was driving the little Volkswagens we could hardly see them in the snow.

So that’s one good reason to drive an SUV?

Well, you can see an SUV a lot easier than you can a Volkswagen.

What other obstacles do you encounter?

Anything that’s covered by the snow underneath you really can’t see. You know what’s one of the biggest problems? The round sewer covers in the center of the street. Sometimes they ride above the ground, so when that plow is plowing and that blade hits the sewer cover, it knocks the plow right off.

Then what happens?

You have to stop the truck, fix the plow, and make sure you didn’t get knocked into anything else, any other cars or something.

How many workers go out when there’s a big snowstorm?

On the 7 o’clock shift in the morning to 7 at night, there are about 2,000 workers out. From 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. we’ll have 2,000 workers out. You’ll have 1,500 plows out and you’ll have 353 salt spreaders out at the peak of the storm, and also 40 other pieces of equipment.

Do you plow all streets, or just the ones with heavy traffic?

You have to hit each street in the city of New York once before you go around and hit them again. Your main streets that are wider like Atlantic Avenue, you can hit those a couple of times normally just because you completed your route. Then you go back and you hit it again.

Are all boroughs equal when it comes to plowing?

The department treats the boroughs all equally.

How is that different outside of the city?

When you’re outside of city, you’re not talking about cars parked in the street. You’re talking about an open road. You’re talking about a person putting a plow down and not lifting that plow up for miles.

Is this a light year for snow?

Are you kidding me? This is the first one all year now. If you remember if you were listening and watching the commissioner, he made a statement saying he’s got extra money because we had no snow during summer. What he did was put the kiss of death on us.

You think the commissioner cursed us?

Let’s call it putting a jinx on us.