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VIRGINIA BEACH — Maybe you’ve noticed the build-up of dirt and leaves along the curbs in your neighborhood and wondered what happened to the street sweeper that used to clean it?
Virginia Beach has gone nearly two years without street cleaning services after the company originally contracted to do the job went bankrupt in 2021, and the city had to procure a new contract, according to Josh Larson, public works engineer.
Street sweeping finally began again in February with a fleet of trucks canvassing neighborhoods across the city.
“We’re off to a good start,” Larson said.
Virginia Beach penned the new annual contract, capped at $3.5 million, with Sweeping Corporation of America, headquartered in Ohio.
Virginia Beach uses its own street sweepers at the Oceanfront and Town Center, so those areas were serviced in the interim. Public Works cleaned storm drains when needed, but neighborhoods were not swept while the contract was in flux, Larson said.
Throughout the rest of the city, the street sweeper operators have their work cut out for them.
On Wednesday morning, one of the company’s new street sweeper trucks rumbled through Chimney Hill.
“The obstacle we’re having is there is so much debris,” said Gary Sink, Sweeping Corporation of America’s Virginia Beach branch manager. “It’s just so deep and thick, and some of it’s matted to the ground.”
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A street sweeper works like this: The machine’s broom stimulates debris next to the curb and shoots it inward toward a vacuum under the center of the truck where it’s deposited into a hopper and later, emptied into a dump truck.
Street sweeping prevents pollutants from entering storm drains and watersheds.
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“Once we get this cleared, it will stop washing down the drains, and then we’re going to be a whole lot more environmentally sound,” said Sink.
Areas heavily saturated with trees and bushes have the most build-up, and when residents blow leaves and other yard debris into the street, it exacerbates the problem, he said.
The company will sweep Virginia Beach seven times this year. The city has about 3,600 curb miles, and they can clean up to 125 miles a day, according to Sink.
It will take several passes before the gutters are fully clean.
“Once we’re about three to four cycles in — and that means we’ve swept every street in the city three times — I think that fourth cycle is going to be a whole lot easier on us, a whole lot easier on the city and people are going to be a whole lot happier,” he said.
Street sweeping is conducted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The neighborhood service schedule is available on the company’s website, and residents will be receiving notices in the mail soon. People are encouraged to move their cars off the street when the sweeper is coming to their neighborhood.
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com