CITY CLEANLINESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 218, 15 September 1925, Page 5

CITY CLEANLINESS.

■ • SWEEPING THE STREETS. A NEW MOTOR MACHINE. One of the problems of a city is the job of keeping the streets clear of refuse, and at the same time of reducing the dust nuisance to a minimum. In Auckland a long step towards city cleanliness was taken by the replacement of macadam roadways by paved thoroughfares, resulting in the streets being automatically flushed clean by heavy rains sweeping all refuse from the paved surface. Where there had previously been immediate mud on the macadam roads and subsequent dust, there is now a clean and shining surface left. Of course, the universal experience of new methods bringing new diseases has operated. The paved surfaces cannot be induced to wear evenly, nor motor traffic to go slower on the improved surface, so that after a rain we have, in place of the old mud and dust nuisance, the- splash nuisance. That, however, is by the way, .and a stimulus to the inventiveness of our road makers, and to the vocabulary of unlucky pedestrians. Another effect of tiie paved surface has been that any quantity of refuse, by contrast, gives a greater impression of untidiness than the same amount did in the old macadam days. So there has been continuous employment for the staff of scavengers with hand brooms and covered carts by day. and with the horse broom at night in the work of keeping the streets tidy. In this work it might be mentioned that employment is found for 2S men with brooms and for 20 drivers and carts, in addition to the horse machine broom.

With the continued additions to the paved roadways, the city engineer and the council have been on the alert for improved methods of street cleaning. They were faced by two alternatives. One was the question of a street-washing machine, or sprinkler, but that was found not quite practicable for the Auckland streets. The other method considered and one which commended itself was the use of a motor-driven pick-up sweeping machine, which conveys the refuse under cover to an enclosed receptacle in the vehicle. The advantage of this is that it can be worked night and day, and it dovetails with the present method of street cleaning in vogue in the city. The City C' ounc 'l has considered tenders for such a machine and will definitely accept a tender on Thursday nigiit It is expected that vrith the acceptance of the' tender the council will be in possession of the machine in about three month?. In the course of conversation with a "Star" representative to-day, an official who is versed in street-cleaning matters mentioned that on occasions when there is a very heavy rain the scavenging staff is reinforced by the street maintenance staff (which attends regularly to road patching) for the purpose of getting the cess-pits quite clear It is obvious that with the flushing of the paved streets under hea%-y rain a great quantity of the ordinary refuse is swept into the cess-pits, necessitating immediate attention to this part of the street cleaning. He added that while the dust nuisance had been appreciably decreased by the adoption of paved roadways, and had been further lessened by the planting of trees along the streets, Auckland was subject to wind currents from all directions and could not be entirely freed from dust.