Street Sweeping in Berkeley Index
  street sweeping

Street sweeping in Berkeley has been around since the horse and buggy days. Initially this municipal maintenance activity was not broad in scope, but the objectives of street cleaning have remained fairly constant through time. Early street sweeping activities focused on control of animal droppings and litter. The idea of cleaning streets has always been associated with health and safety.

Originally, mechanical sweeping of city residential streets was done on a request for service basis only. As more requests were made, Berkeley formulated a citywide street sweeping program. In 1987 the City Council, through resolution, authorized this program to include an enforced parking component. This 1987 program was designed to be implemented in four phases (see attachment).

street sweeperBy 1990 all but the final phase (4) of the street sweeping program had been implemented. Because of citizen opposition to various aspects of the program, Public Works began a reassessment of the then current residential (non leaf) street sweeping program. Following this investigation the city put forth recommendations for an IMPROVED street cleaning program.

Our million dollar a year street sweeping program is based on a policy of mechanically sweeping MOST residential streets monthly and commercial areas daily. (The policy excludes certain streets in the Berkeley hills which have no curb or are too steep for mechanical sweeping.) In addition, the new program supports a separate leaf removal component, steam cleaning services, targeted sidewalk/gutter cleaning in commercial areas and opt-out procedures for residential street sweeping.

Opt-out for residential street cleaning

runoff bannerBerkeley's "opt-out" feature was developed to address the concerns of neighborhoods that do not wish to participate in the enforced parking component of the residential street sweeping program. This exemption has meant that neighborhoods who petitioned and met certain criteria would neither be subject to the installation of signs restricting parking on sweeping days nor would there be enforcement of parking restrictions through the issuance of citations.

It is acknowledged that "enforced parking insures that cars will be removed from the street on sweeping day so that the city's mechanical sweepers are able to reach the curb." Without controlled parking, residential sweeping only achieves ten to twenty percent effectiveness Berkeley is the ONLY participant of the seventeen member water program with an "opt-out" dimension to their sweeping program.

There are several criteria for exclusion of residential streets from controlled parking. Streets must be in low litter, low density neighborhoods, and not in commercial or industrial districts. Berkeley has very few areas that could be viewed as low density. Our 18 square miles of city ranks high for urban density in the nation. As Berkeley citizens we all recognize that most of the city's automobile problems relate to issues of auto density as well. Excerpt from Berkeley Street Sweeping Programs L A Wood, Berkeley Voice article, November 30, 1992

street sweep signNEW Berkeley Opts Out of Clean Water
L A Wood, Berkeley Daily Planet, March 11, 2008
“City of Berkeley, the water is murky” has become the latest rap on the city’s crumbling storm drain infrastructure. For nearly two decades, Berkeley’s Clean Water efforts in controlling surface water pollution have amounted to little more than a “greenwash” of meaningless phrases such as “Save the Bay”. The city’s failure to implement our urban runoff program is rooted in its longstanding resistance to adequately fund the maintenance and upkeep of our storm drain system. Berkeley has proclaimed over and over that it is “rolling out the green carpet”, but in reality, has used that carpet to cover this inconvenient truth...read more

Street sweeping protest signsCity of Berkeley - Public Works Department

Clean Storm Water and the Opt Out Component of Street Sweeping Program Report January 9, 1995
Table of Contents (COMING SOON)

Executive Summary, Section 1
(Introduction), Section 2
(Street Sweeping Program), Section 3
(Clean Water Program), Section 4
(Pertinent Data), Section 5
(Evaluation of Alternatives), Section 6 (Recommendations), List of Resources, Abbreviations, Appendices Section A., B., C., and D.

"Berkeley's Storm Drain System: Portal to the Bay" (1992) 8:30 TRT...on the impact of the City of Berkeley Public Works street sweeper operations on storm drains, urban runoff pollution and the San Francisco Bay.

Comments from city and Alameda County water management
on "Berkeley Storm Drain System, Portal to the Bay" video (1992)



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