Sweeping Support

In order to make the most of street sweeping programs, many communities pair their street sweeping efforts with a parking restriction schedule. In March and April, as states implemented stay-at-home orders and business either closed, reduced hours, or moved their employees to remote work, may communities modified their sweeping programs—either pausing sweeping entirely or, as is the case in San Diego, CA, pausing parking enforcement.

Stormwater spoke to Bethany Bezak, Assistant Deputy Director of Storm Water for the City of San Diego, recently about the city’s decision to pause parking enforcement while continuing to promote and protect the city’s water quality.

Stormwater: Could you tell us a little bit about San Diego’s street sweeping efforts?
Bethany Bezak: The city maintains 273 sweeping routes throughout the city, 75 of those routes are posted and they cover each one of our six main watershed areas of concern across the city of San Deigo. Last year we had just under 100,000 miles of street sweeping that we conducted across the city; street sweeping is included in all of our council districts, so it’s a pretty good representation of each one of those areas. It includes both residential and commercial areas, and our posted routes are also included in some commercial and residential areas.

When I say “posted,” I mean that there are parking restrictions and there’s a time when vehicles need to be moved from the streets to allow full access of the street sweepers into the curb and gutter lane. I’m sure you’re well familiar with street sweeping, but it is most effective when we’re able to get to that curb and gutter line because it allows us to get to the area where most of the debris and pollutants and trash are located.

SW: In California, there isn’t much rain around this time of year to carry sediment, trash, and pollutants into waterways. In San Diego, street sweeping itself wasn’t paused, but the parking restrictions were, correct?
BB: Street sweeping parking enforcement was paused back in March. We continued our full street sweeping operations, as far as running a street sweeper every single route as we typically would on our regularly scheduled days. However, we stopped the parking enforcement. So, for the routes that are posted for parking enforcement, we paused on that, which meant then that we would still send a street sweeper down that road but where vehicles were parked, they wouldn’t have access to the curb and gutter line.

It certainly added a layer of complexity, and our street sweeping is certainly not as efficient from a trash, debris, and pollutant removal (standpoint), but we still did continue our operations in that capacity.

SW: What kind of debris and pollutants does San Diego look to tackle with street sweeping?
BB: It does vary by the watershed and the area of concern. As I mentioned, we have six main watersheds in San Deigo and each one of those has different concerns as it relates to the pollutant of concern, from a water quality perspective. That can be anything from metals to nutrients or trash, but it also relates to whether or not an area is a heavily commercial area or a residential area.

From a community perspective, most people’s perception is that street sweeping is an aesthetic and cleanliness concern—removing trash and visible debris from the roads and keeping the neighborhood tidy. But what we try to educate folks on is that it’s even more than that—it’s the fine particulate matter, it’s the metals from brake dust and things like that, which are also contributing to water quality. It does vary in different areas, but I would say it ranges everything from the large material—the trash—all the way down to the fine material—metals and pollution.

SW: Were there any concerns around pausing enforcement, even while mitigating the impact by continuing sweeping?
BB: That’s why we wanted to continue our operations and have as much continuity as we possibly could. We’re best equipped to handle the pollution removal if we’re doing it on a consistent basis and while it’s not the rainy season, we felt that it was important to do as much as we possibly could. The regional board [San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board] has also made it clear that the expectation is that we continue all of our water quality efforts; we’ve been deemed essential, and we should continue our operations as best as we possibly could.

SW: Why was it decided to pause? Has it resumed? What goes into that decision?
BB: It had initially been decided that we were going to reinitiate the full parking enforcement and street sweeping both starting on July 1st. That decision came out of the Mayor’s office, in terms of monitoring what the impacts of COVID were locally and how many people were getting back to work and so forth. As we were approaching that date, the mayor had decided to postpone the reinstatement of the parking enforcement to August 1st. Subsequently, we now have moved that to September 1st, so we have not actually restarted the parking enforcement; the plan right now is to restart that September 1st. The initial decision was made to help mitigate the impact of folks having to move their cars and in consideration that some people are still at home and there’s less activity in general.

SW: What kind of sweepers does San Diego use?
BB: We have what’s considered a regenerative air sweeper and we also have mechanical sweepers. Mechanical sweepers tend to perform best in areas with larger debris—the trash and larger materials that need to be removed from the road. Regenerative air sweepers—and we’ve done quite a few private studies to confirm pollutant removal—those types of sweepers tend to be much better with the fine particulate and also you know more pollution and nutrient base. We’ve done quite a bit of work in each one of the watersheds to make sure that we’ve selected the right sweeper for those locations to make sure that we’re achieving the greatest value out of the efforts.

SW: How did the public respond to the pause in enforcement?BB: The communication element of this is very important. The silver lining has been that this has been an opportunity for us to communicate more regularly with folks on street sweeping, when it might have been an afterthought for them, quite honestly. For some folks, it’s not something they think about or perhaps even stormwater generally, so as we’ve been approaching the reinstatement of parking enforcement we’ve actually placed fliers on all of the cars in our neighborhoods that have posted routes to educate people about the importance of street sweeping and why the parking enforcement is there. Parking enforcement, from our perspective, is not revenue generation in the least. It’s more of a (partnering) from the street sweeper having access to the curb and gutter line and being most efficient.