For a week, Minneapolis street crews have been busily sweeping leaves from the 1,100 miles of the city's streets.
It's a remarkable process. Signs are posted along streets that are to be cleaned, warning people that their cars will be towed if they aren't moved on sweeping day. The city also tries to leave phone messages with residents that the street cleaners are coming. (Despite the warnings, in the first four days of the big sweep, 711 cars were towed.)
The leaves that are gathered are shipped by truck to Hutchinson, 75 miles from where they fell.
That's right. Minneapolis pays Hutchinson to take our leaves -- 7,792,680 pounds of leaves last year.
The city of Hutchinson not only is paid by Minneapolis to take the leaves. It owns a company, Creekside Soils, which composts the leaves and sells the resulting soil product to such outlets as Home Depot and Menards.
Those companies, of course, sell the bags of compost back to people in the Twin Cities.
One small hitch in this mighty operation: On many of our lovely, tree-lined streets, the autumn leaves haven't yet fallen.
Wouldn't it make sense to wait for the leaves to fall before sweeping?
"It's a timing thing," said Paul Ogren, director of field services for the Public Works Department.
It takes roughly four weeks to get the streets cleared. That means the job won't be done until late November. And that means street cleaners are in a race against snow and freezing rain.
"Once leaves get frozen to the pavement, they're almost impossible to remove," Ogren said.
The sight of sweepers moving down streets still shaded by trees in full leaf can be "a little frustrating," Ogren admitted.
"We try to have a few days at the end of the sweep for what we call mop-up. We want to be able to get back to streets where the leaves have fallen late."
Once upon a time, this was a more predictable operation.
"Minneapolis used to be a city of elm trees," he said. "They tend to drop their leaves early and they tend to drop all at the same time. Now, we have diversity."
Ralph Sievert, director of forestry service for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, said varieties of oaks and maples are the most popular in replacing the elms. Maples, especially, are favored because of the color they provide
But maples and oaks hold their leaves longer, meaning more sweeping headaches for the city.Minneapolis Star Tribune
