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PRESS RELEASE City of St. Albans purchases new street sweeper with an eye on local water quality

Contact: Chip Sawyer, Director of Planning & Development, 802-524-1500 *259, c.sawyer@stalbansvt.com

The City of St. Albans has purchased and put to work a new street sweeper. The purchase is funded 50% by an Ecosystem Restoration Program grant from the State of Vermont, Agency of Natural Resources, Department of Environmental Conservation.  The new $256,000 vacuum-based machine will improve the City’s ability to clean streets and keep pollutants out of local waterways, including stormwater impaired sections of Stevens and Rugg Brooks.  It replaces the City’s 11-year-old mechanical sweeper.

“With this new sweeper, we can give a much better product to the community,” says Allen Robtoy the City’s Director of Public Works. “Compared to our old machine, we will be able to do the same work in half the time and clean streets more often.”  The new sweeper also has vacuum attachments that will allow crews to remove piles of debris and clear off storm grates.

With the new sweeper, the City will also be able to participate in a multi-community effort to measure how much pollution regular street sweeping diverts from local waterways. The Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission was recently awarded Vermont Ecosystem Restoration Program funds for the study in nine communities.  Each community, including the City of St. Albans, will submit test results of regular street sweepings in order to learn more about the types and amounts of nutrients being captured.  The data from this study will inform the extent to which the City’s regular street sweeping is helping to keep pollutants out of local brooks and St. Albans Bay.

In the meantime, City residents will be able to see the new street sweeper out and about, hard at work. In October of 2018, the City will submit a final report to the Vermont Dept. of Environmental Conservation on how often the sweeper has operated and how much it has collected.

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