City to begin residential street-sweeping regime on April 14

Street sweeping in Edmonton. (John Hanson/CTV News Edmonton)

It’s a wash.

Street sweepers are poised to take to Edmonton’s roads to begin cleaning up sand, gravel and residue as days get longer and warmer, and snow melts even faster.

The city is beginning its 2025 residential street-sweeping campaign on April 14 and is slated to run it until June 1.

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Valerie Dacyk, the City of Edmonton’s general supervisor of infrastructure field operations, says residents should keep watch for signs at entrances to their neighbourhoods to know when sweepers will be coming to their area and to be prepared to help keep streets free of vehicles during designated periods.

The city also maintains an online street-sweeping map for residents’ reference.

“The more room you give us to work, the quicker we can get through your neighborhoods,” Dacyk told CTV News Edmonton. “That includes moving your cars when you see signage in your areas.”

A parking ban is in effect on neighbourhood streets from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vehicle owners face getting a $250 fine if they fail to remove them from the street.

Residue recycled as much as possible

And efforts are made to ensure as much of all that sand, gravel and whatnot that gets collected, including that which ends up in the annual mountains of snow from streets removed over the winter by city crews, is recycled, Dacyk said.

“It is a challenging type of material, because as you can imagine, there is everything in those piles,” she said.

“We do use third-party recipients to take the material and they split it out. They recycle what they can to other types of infrastructure and those types of things, but some of it does (become) landfill because of the type of garbage (that’s in it.) Also, we have to remember that is coming off roadways.”