The spring cleanup is in full swing in North Battleford and the street sweepers are on the streets.
Director of operations Stewart Schafer reported to council Monday that the City’s sweeper was on the street that day, sweeping down the centre line.
Some information was released about the use of the street sweeping equipment, which is expected to be in use over the next six to eight weeks:
During the spring cleanup a dump truck works in tandem with the sweeper to speed up the cleanup. The sweeper starts with the centre of the roads. The goal is to take out the dirt, which Schafer noted “this year is very hard, surprisingly.”
He noted there were some areas where the City may need to run a Bobcat or a front-end loader to scrape some of the dirt off.
After the centre lanes are done the sweepers go into the driving lanes and finally the parking lanes.
The sweepers will start by doing the priority roads before moving into the residential areas. The parking restriction schedule is followed as closely as possible, and will pick up where it left off if it not able to finish the entire route that day.
Downtown streets are cleaned during the early morning shift starting at 6 a.m., but starting next week they hope to start the shift at 3 a.m. to get downtown streets looked after.
City manager Jim Puffalt noted that contrary to public impression, the streets are not swept every week. It’s usually every two weeks following the spring cleanup. Also, the sweeper is equipped with GPS so people can get information about when it has been on a street.
