As a resident of unincorporated Snohomish County in the Martha Lake area, I am appalled at the continued use of outmoded and ineffective street sweepers to “clean” our roads and cul-de-sacs.
Driving toward home, a friend of mine pointed out what should have been obvious, that street sweepers do not clean streets at all. They are like brooms without dustpans, moving dirt and dust around without getting rid of it.
What do those great brushes do? Even assuming they do get the grime and grit from the road, where does it go? It is swept carelessly into our lawns, onto our sidewalks, to those parts of the neighborhood where our feet, not just our car tires, might go.
We passed a street sweeper in action as we drove on, and saw for ourselves that what it left behind was not a cleaner street, but one changed dramatically for the worse. The debris, branches and man-made junk was scattered about behind the slow-moving sweeper. A clear line marked the sweeper’s path, as if some poorly placed mechanical part had scraped along the ground for blocks. Somehow the sweeper even changed the color of the road. The untouched side was the standard pavement gray. The “cleaned” side had been dusted in an unpleasant muddy brown.
The redistribution of a public mess does not make it go away. It’s not as if many of our streets don’t need cleaning – they do! But this method is obviously not working. The tax money going to fund the street sweepers should be put toward a more economical, sensible solution to dirty streets. Perhaps it’s time for new equipment. As the ones who foot the bill for this and other programs we need to speak up – or we’ll just be paying for someone else’s mess.
Sam Paul
Lynnwood
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