Submitted by Fox First at Ten on October 25th
SPOKANE, Wash. - The leaves have started falling around Spokane and have been filling up the streets and gutters, but the City of Spokane's street department is still about a week away from cleaning them up.
The street department's operations engineer, Andy Schenk, says Mother Nature this year has led to a late start on leaf removal. They only pick up leaves once in an area, and says there are still a significant amount of leaves still in the trees. They are waiting for the majority of those leaves to fall before going out to pick them up off the streets.
Limited resources, time, and cost are the reasons the City only removes leaves one time a year. They plan to announce a schedule in the coming weeks for when and where they will be picking up leaves.
They hope to complete leaf removal before the snow starts to fall, which would cut short their ability to remove all the leaves.
In the meantime, they encourage citizens to be proactive and remove any leaves from the gutters near their homes. This will prevent standing water and any possible flooding around the drains when it rains.
