Ignore the “NO PARKING” signage posted down your block at your own peril – every street in every ward is scheduled for cleaning this summer, and now the $50 ticket is photo enforced. Even while some Chicagoans have begun questioning the effectiveness of the city’s fleet of street sweepers, the Department of Streets and Sanitation has maintained that it is not revenue, but clean streets, that are the motive for leveling the costly fines.
What do street cleaners actually clean up?
Today’s modern street sweeper machines have been shown to reduce water pollution and improve air quality in the metropolitan area.
The humble street sweeper has been a fixture of the city environment since the 1800s reform movements in urban aesthetics and sanitation. He was primarily concerned with cleaning up the mounds of horse manure that would accumulate on the cobblestone thoroughfares in the days before the automobile. His tools were a push broom and a dust bin.
But in 1914, John Murphy invented a motorized street sweeper in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He started the Elgin Sweeper Corporation, which currently supplies Streets and Sanitation with its fleet of nimble, 3-wheeled Pelican model street sweepers.
The Elgin Pelicans have a distinctive look.
And a distinctive personality.
Elgin markets itself as an environmentally conscious company. On May 6, 2009, it reported that Canada’s Environmental Technology Verification Program vindicated the results of a test showing that Elgin’s Crosswind NX “regenerative air” street sweeper and the Waterless Eagle FW model were efficient at removing dust particles of 10 microns or less from the air.
They also offer a model of the Pelican that runs on natural gas to reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere.
Regardless of the fuel source or fancy new air-filtration gimmicks, the very simple rotating broom and suction system employed by most street sweepers is all that is needed to clean up the garbage and litter that tends to pile up on the curb, which is a necessary part of our urban hygiene.
Remember the Pride Parade?
Refuse from the street can block storm drains, or be washed down into them. On January 30th, 2008, Elgin commissioned a study by Pacific Water Resources, Inc. that measured the performance of four of its Elgin Street Sweeper models under simulated conditions. According to the results of the study, the machines removed between 81% and 97.5% of pollutants from storm water runoff.
All storm water flows into Chicago’s old combined sewer system, where runoff from the streets and wastewater from our drains travels through the same set of pipes to the nearest sewage treatment plant. In ideal conditions, the water goes through a physical, chemical and biological treatment process so it can be safely returned to the rivers and canals connecting the Great Lakes basin to the Des Plaines River valley.
However, even recent experience has shown us that heavy rains can overwhelm the system, flushing untreated sewage into the surrounding water supply.
There is no amount of street sweeping that can keep sanitary wastewater from contaminating our fresh water supply in extreme weather conditions. But large infrastructure projects, like the ambitious Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, are already underway making the fundamental improvements to Chicago’s sewer system so that overflow events are becoming an ever rarer occurrence.
In the meantime, though, a little less filth down the drain is, on the whole, a pretty good thing.
Print
E-mail
Len Kody
South Sider. Comics Writer. Daily Daley Contributor. Editorial Intern. More
Comments
Post new comment