Over a century ago, street sweeping was only performed by municipalities that had an “above and beyond” drive to maintain aesthetic and safety goals as well as to remove large amounts of filth and garbage lining downtown city streets. Cities that relied on tourism didn’t want to be viewed as a dirty city that would turn people off from coming back. Also, any debris on the road surface from nails to rocks could potential cause a flat tire to an automobile or bicycle or get thrown up by a car’s tire and break a window, or worse hit a pedestrian.

Today, it is known that routine street sweeping has so many more benefits beyond just aesthetics – keeping storm drainage systems clear, improving stormwater runoff quality and improving air quality among others. Providing the public with routine street sweeping services will undoubtedly achieve aesthetic and safety goals by keep city streets clean and clear of leaves, trash and other debris that could become a safety hazard to local automobile, bicycle and pedestrian traffic. However, providing routine street sweeping with TYMCO Regenerative Air Sweepers allow you to not only remove larger debris such as leaves, trash, gravel and rocks, but also will remove fine dirt and sand as well as ultrafine particulates out of all of the cracks and crevices throughout the imperfections in the paved surface.

Municipalities are required to implement a number of Best Management Practices (BMPs) for stormwater management. There are several different BMPs that can be implemented such as adding additional landscaping, installing storm drain catch basins and sweeping paved surfaces on a frequent basis. Sweeping city streets and roads, construction sites and industrial plants on a regular basis obviously keeps the larger debris from going down storm drains, but sweeping with a TYMCO Regenerative Air Sweeper will also remove all of the fine dust particulates out of the cracks and crevices.

More often than not, fine dust particulates can be more damaging to stormwater runoff than larger debris. This dust can contain several different contaminants and toxins like vehicle lubricants, coolants and brake dust, petroleum products used in pavements as well as other contaminants that fall on parking areas, road intersections and where there is parking on downtown streets. Whenever there is a rain event, anything left on the paved surface will be picked up by the stormwater runoff and flow into local waterways.