The sand-covered streets of Barrie have road crews busy as they sweep up the mess after a long, cold winter.
Street sweeping happens every spring and takes about 10 weeks to complete, weather permitting.
Crews prioritize street sweeping in the city’s five drinking water protection areas and then move outward from there.
The city says street sweeping can improve water quality and ‘helps the environment by removing pollutants that can be transferred to downstream water bodies.’
The city isn’t just cleaning away the sand. It’s also collecting it.
“The sand can be reused, it has to be screened to remove any garbage and impurities, then it’s mixed with virgin sand and eventually some salt to prevent it from freezing them stacked in our storage facility,” said Craig Morton, Director of Roads, Parks and Fleet.
Last year the city collected 2,400 tonnes of sand, most of which was reused this past winter.
The city avoids more than $250,000 in costs by using recycled sand.
The city is encouraging residents to avoid parking on the road, so sweepers don’t have to go around them, only to come back at a later date.
“We try to be diligent about that, but it’s better if residents don’t park on the streets during the street sweeping program,” Morton said.
The city has more than 1,300 kilometres of roadway to cover if you count both lanes.
