Stormwater

How Schwarze helped Washington County, MD achieve permit compliance and reduce TMDL for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

Washington County, Maryland, which is located in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed was looking for an effective solution to meet both NPDES permit and EPA total maximum daily load requirements. After a cost assessment of implementing Chesapeake Bay requirements tallied up to more than a billion dollars, “we really had to look at ways to become innovative and creative,” said Alex Reed, watershed specialist for Washington County.
Washington County’s NPDES permit requires it to reduce or treat its approximately 700 acres of impervious surface by 20%, according to Reed. To help meet these goals, the county opted to purchase an A8 Twister regenerative air sweeper from Schwarze Industries. Under the guidelines of one lane-mile of sweeping with a regenerative air sweeper equals one impervious acre treated, the staff separated the county into 45 “sweepable sections” that each will be swept 25 times per year, with a goal of sweeping at least 12 lane-miles per day.
The sweeper provides the county double functionality when it comes to BMPs—in addition to street sweeping, it also has catch basin cleaning capabilities. This was a feature Washington County particularly sought when selecting the A8 Twister, Reed said.
Another factor that helped Washington County decide on the A8 Twister is its high dump feature, which allows the county to pair the sweeper with a dump truck, so it does not have to stop sweeping to drive to a dump facility to unload. “Once the dump truck is full, it can run to the landfill, where it dumps the material and then comes back to be staged,” Reed said. “Then we never stop the street sweeper during the day while it’s out and about.”
Achieving Community Involvement and Buy-In
Because the sweeper is able to serve the entire county, people from communities across the economic spectrum are able to see it at work in their neighborhoods. “A lot of the lower-income places and communities in the county, those are areas that have already been developed,” meaning there is not space for BMPs like storm ponds, Reed explained. A sweeper, however, can get into those communities and make a difference. “The debris is picked up, and then all of a sudden these underserved communities aesthetically look better,” he said.
The public response has been overwhelmingly positive. “I’m honestly surprised—happily surprised—how many phone calls we’ve gotten from people calling to thank us,” Reed said.
Washington County also uses the sweeper to promote its Clean County Initiative, a program that aims to ensure taxpayer dollars are used effectively and create awareness of the county’s efforts to improve the environment. The sweeper features the Clean County Initiative logo and its motto, “Clean Streets, Clean Streams, Clean County.”
“People recognize it and they’re starting to get that brand recognition with good work in the community,” Reed said, adding that events such as stream cleanups and tree plantings at schools have recently experienced higher attendance. “As long as we have that community buy-in, we’re going to be able to continue to reach our goals and therefore, be one of the counties that actually meets our NPDES goals, and that’s something we’re pretty fired up about. And doing that on limited resources—that’s even better.”

OKOTOKS UTILIZES MULTI-PURPOSE STREET SWEEPERS AS A SOURCE CONTROL MEASURE TO ENSURE CLEANER STORMWATER IS RETURNED TO THE SHEEP RIVER.

Okotoks is a town in the Province of Alberta Canada located on the Sheep River approximately 11 miles south of the City of Calgary. With a population of just under 30,000 residents, it is one of the fastest growing towns in Alberta. There is a strong, community wide environmental advocacy to protect the Sheep River and it’s abundant trout population. The municipality leads this effort with source control measures including the latest monitoring technology.

The town’s storm sewer and drainage system consists of over 117 kilometers of main lines with approximately 2000 catch basins and several storm ponds tied to the surface transportation drainage network. This network is monitored and managed at the operations center using GIS software. Crews maintain the system using Schwarze model A7 multi purpose street sweepers equipped with catch basin cleaners. When a dispatcher at the operations center receives a complaint of a clogged catch basin from a private citizen or public worker, the location is marked using a nearby address. A repair order with a description of the problem is then entered into the system. When the dispatcher presses send a notification comes up on the sweeper operator’s iPad. The operator and crew will then go to the site to assess the situation. Once the catch basin is flushed the status is updated from failed to flushed on the operator’s iPad.

Operations Superintendent Peter McDowell says, “We purchased the A7 because of the versatility of using it as a street sweeper and a combination flushing unit to maintain our catch basins and our storm sewers. Our town council really appreciated that it was a versatile piece of equipment so it’s not just tied up for doing street sweeping. When we are not using it as a street sweeper we are using it for catch basin maintenance so we have no dirt or silt making it into our stormwater system and then back into the river.”

These source control measures are helping Okotoks ensure cleaner water is returned to the Sheep River.

An Ohio River community leverages versatility of street sweeping equipment

Situated along the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers, the small city of Marietta, Ohio puts a focus on reducing the sediment and debris that enter its waterways. According to Streets Superintendent Todd Stockel, a crucial part of those efforts is the city’s street sweeper.

Street Sweeping
The Marietta Streets Department has divided the city into five sections for street sweeping, Stockel said. During the springtime months, when the temperature may not be warm enough to complete any one section at time, “we’ll stay in one location until we sweep … every street on that location before we move onto the next one,” he explained.

In May, with summer weather in sight, Marietta launches its five-day street sweeping schedule, which covers one section per day Monday through Thursday, and ends with overnight sweeping of the business district Thursday night and into Friday morning. The schedule stays consistent throughout the summer, Stockel said, allowing residents to plan ahead and move their cars to the other side of the street on their neighborhood’s designated day.

Catch Basin Cleaning
The city uses an A7 Tornado street sweeper from Schwarze Industries, which also has a catch basin hose attachment. According to Stockel, the biggest challenge the city faces when it comes to its catch basins is leaves. “We have a massive amount of trees that lose leaves,” he said. Although Marietta offers leaf pickup over a six-week period in the late fall, and works to educate the public on placing the leaves between the curb and sidewalk so they stay out of the streets, some of the leaves—along with some salt and sand from the city’s snow removal efforts—make it into the storm drains.

The city of Marietta has a sewer vac truck, but the Streets Department has found the street sweeper to be its preferred equipment for catch basin cleaning. One of the primary reasons is size. The sewer vac truck is “problematic to get into the tight corners throughout the city of Marietta,” Stockel said. “All our streets are accessible to the street sweeper.”

Stockel describes the street sweeper as a “workhorse” due its abilities to perform both street sweeping and catch basin cleaning. He noted that the A7 Tornado’s spray wand attachment help “drastically” with the cleaning efforts. “If it’s dried up, you can wet the product down, wet the sand down, and make it more … pliable to come out of the storm drain altogether,” he said.

A Vital Resource
The use of the street sweeper for both sweeping and catch basin cleaning goes a long way toward keeping sediment and debris out of local waterways, and therefore helping the city to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. It is a piece of equipment Stockel doesn’t feel the city could do without. “It’s relied upon very heavily in our schedule and maintenance program in addition to what it does throughout the summer months on its scheduled street sweeping, so it’s vital,” he said.