Speedy street cleaning in Black Diamond last week has left some residents in the dust.
A lack of dust control and signage while contracted street cleaners went about their work on April 17 and 18 has raised the ire of some Black Diamond residents.
“We are stuck with the residue,” said resident Michel Jackson, a former town councillor. “Cars are raising a lot of dust off the street. You can’t have your window open.”
Jackson expressed concerns to council on April 19 that not enough water was used to clean the streets and that residents weren’t adequately notified their street was slated for cleaning.
Similar complaints were posted on a local Facebook site earlier in the week.
Jackson, who lives on 2nd Avenue NW, said the Town alerted the public on its website that streets would be cleaned, but there should have been more communication.
“We used to get notices in our utility bills,” he said, adding the Town could have also posted it on communication boards throughout Black Diamond.
Council expressed some of its own complaints about last week’s street sweeping service, including Jackie Stickel who told council she saw two machines side-by-side heading east on Highway 7 towards Rona, delaying traffic.
Deputy Mayor Mike Ross said the street sweepers pushed gravel onto some sidewalks and when the town’s brusher cleared the sidewalks the debris went back onto the street.
Mayor Glen Fagan said the street cleaning was done very quickly, with most of it completed before public works personnel put no-parking signs on the streets.
“This is the fastest I’ve ever seen the street sweepers go,” he said. “We were surprised to see it move that fast. They got it done quickly, but they didn’t give the public enough awareness. Last year I had a full day of signage before sweeping happened.”
Coun. Brian Marconi echoed Fagan’s points that street cleaning was done before signs went up.
“It seems the contractor was very fast this year,” he said. “It was going through areas where there was no signs and no one had any warning.”
Sharlene Brown, the Town’s chief administrative officer, said there was no schedule for street cleaning and that needs to change in the future.
“They were doing the streets where they could and they were going around cars,” she said. “Like our snow removal there needs to be a set plan.”
Brown said the initial street cleaning done each spring is contracted out because it is too hard on the Town’s equipment.
“There is a lot of gravel, a lot of salt,” she said. “If someone else does it, it saves our equipment. Our street sweeper is fairly old so we want to make sure the first big sweep is done by another company.”
Staff at the town office received no complaints about the service, said Brown.
Rod Gussman didn’t launch a complaint, but the 3rd Street NW resident said citizens should have been given adequate notice.
“Usually they give you a little bit more notice and put signs on the street the night before,” he said. “On 3rd Street the signs went up after the sweeping was finished. I thought they were coming back with water to fix this. Apparently this is not the case.”
After undergoing lung surgery almost five years ago, Gussman said his lung capacity is at about half of that of the average person and even climbing a couple of stairs leaves him short of breath.
Therefore, the lack of water used to clean his street forced him to stay inside the house with the windows closed.
“When the sweeper went by it was just a big cloud of dust,” he said. “It looked like a dust storm behind that machine.”
Brown said administration will look into getting a water truck to spray down the roads and that the Town’s own street sweeper will be out to do a final cleaning at the end of May.
