Street cleaning is an essential part of any sanitation department in any city, municipality and state. For many years in the Greater Toronto Area, street flushing has accompanied brushing during the initial spring time cleaning. But recently, with the use of the latest technology, street flushing has been greatly reduced.
Before any studies were conducted in GTA, street flushing was used more for aesthetic purposes. But later on, after initial tests they were meant to augment the work of street scrubbing vehicles. The technology used before were not as strong as they are now that water had to be used to loosen and soften packed down debris on roads.
For a while, spraying water on roads proved to be a very effective part of city sanitation projects. However, when more comprehensive studies were made after an air quality monitoring report in a major city in Ontario, spraying water on roads was considered a little less environmentally friendly.
Advantages of Street Flushing
Spraying water on the pavement however, still has benefits and can still augment the street brushing process even with the use of the latest technology.
The first advantage of street flushing is dust control. Brushing and high velocity air can cause a lot of air disturbance on the road. Eventually, the area where street brushers are working on becomes very dusty. Water helps in this process since they make air particles heavier. Thus when the surfaced is brushed, dirt is heavy and will not fly all over the area.
The second advantage of street flushing is it loosens debris on the road; leaves in particular. The initial spring time cleaning is the hardest compared to other cleaning periods. Debris and dirt are packed down on the road and are very hard to remove. But with water, they become soft and loosen.
The third advantage of spraying water on streets is it cleans after street brushers. Missing areas on streets is not uncommon in street brushing. These machines have difficulty maneuvering so that when a vehicle or any other object is parked on the street, a considerable large area is left dirty. After the final sweep, street flushing trucks makes a pass on roads to take care of missed areas where dirt is still present.
Disadvantages of Street Flushing
The first disadvantage of the frequent spraying of water on streets has to do with going against resources conservation. Too much water is sometimes used especially during the initial spring time cleaning. And at this time and age, conserving natural resources such as water is a must.
The second disadvantage is that this activity defeats the purpose of street sweeping. Street flushing can sometimes cause debris and litter to accumulate into storm sewers along with water. Later on, they end up into receiving bodies of water, acting as water pollutants.
Today, water spraying is still being done to augment street brushing but only in lesser amounts compared to the previous years. The lesser use of this cleaning technique was enforced after standards regarding the overall environmental performances of street cleaning technologies were enforced in GTA. Sprayers are still mounted on the latest technology but are used on a need to basis only-when high velocity air is not enough to remove packed down debris. In addition, mounted sprayers are optional features only offered by manufacturing industries.
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