Street sweeping

Image courtesy Sarah Hobbie, University of Minnesota

Information on street sweeping

• Overview of street sweeping
• Recommended street sweeping practices for water quality purposes - Coming in summer, 2021
• Pollutant removal associated with street sweeping
• Managing street sweepings
• Case studies for street sweeping
• Supporting information

Street sweeping crediting and Phosphorus Calculator

• Street Sweeping Phosphorus Credit Calculator - Coming in spring, 2021
• Street Sweeping Phosphorus Credit Calculator: User Guide
• Methods for sampling street sweeping material - Standard Operating Procedures
• Methods for calculating pollutant reductions (credits) for street sweeping
• Guidance for incorporating street sweeping into the Minimal Impact Design Standards Calculator and MPCA’s Simple Estimator - Coming in summer, 2021

University of Minnesota research on street sweeping

• Developing a street sweeping credit for stormwater phosphorus source reduction - this page contains information and the final report from the U of M study that led to development of the phosphorus calculator. Researchers: Sarah E. Hobbie, Rachel King, Tessa Belo, Lawrence A. Baker, Jacques C. Finlay.
• Quantifying Nutrient Removal through Targeted Intensive Street Sweeping - summary of Prior Lake study, 2010-2013 (Kalinosky et al., 2013). For additional information related to this project, link here

Links

• Internal
  • Final Street Sweeping: Survey of Crediting Approaches
  • Street sweeping for trees
  • Trees
  • MS4 fact sheet - Street & Parking Lot Sweeping
• External
  • Using leaf collection and street cleaning to reduce nutrients in urban stormwater - This page summarizes on-going research by the United States Geological Survey on street sweeping. Lead researcher - William Selbig.
  • Recommendations of the Expert Panel to Define Removal Rates for Street and Storm Drain Cleaning Practices - Final document produced by Chesapeake Bay expert panel
  • Neat websites and articles for trees

Survey of street sweeping practices

The MPCA conducted a survey of cities to determine their street sweeping practices, their interest in a street sweeping credit, and their ability to implement different methods for crediting sweeping. We have not yet fully analyzed the data, but some general conclusions include the following.

• 75 cities responded to the survey and indicated they operate a sweeping program. This was a response rate of close to 50 percent. The responses were distributed geographically across the state and covered a wide range of city sizes (large to small).
• About 78 percent indicated they would be likely to participate in a crediting program
• All but 7 cities can track sweeping information, but 66 percent said they cannot relate material collected to a specific geographic area. This is a question we likely will follow-up with, since being able to relate material to a geographic location is potentially a way of targeting sweeping efforts.
• Most cities estimate volume or mass of material collected, but few measure volume or mass or have the ability to measure dry weight of material collected
• Most cities sweep quarterly or less and most do not specifically sweep in response to fall leave drop

The summary information can be found here.

Related pages

• Trees
• Phosphorus
• Total Suspended Solids (TSS) in stormwater
• Street sweeping for trees
• Neat websites and articles for trees
• Guidance for managing sediment and wastes collected by pretreatment practices: Note - this page contains some information on disposal of material collected in pretreatment practices, include information on street sweepings