It’s a chilly, sunlit November morning and a Milwaukee County High-way Department crew is hard at work along Mill Road and 43rd Street on the far north side of Wisconsin’s largest city.
Using a pick and a sledgehammer, Bill Luzinski pries up the heavy cast metal grate that shields a storm sewer catch basin, just west of the intersection against the median in the westbound lane of Mill Road.
Luzinski and his co-workers, Tony Minter and Oscar Rush, attach a 6-foot hard plastic tube to the vacuum hose of the crew’s VacAll VS16C sweeper truck. Luzinski maneuvers the vehicle into place, and Minter and Rush lower the tube nearly five feet into the catch basin. The truck’s pump roars as the tube sucks up dry leaves that have piled up nearly to the top of the storm sewer line that extends from the basin under the roadway, all but obscuring the outlet.
In minutes, the job is done. Minter and Rush sweep the frame on which the sewer grate will rest to ensure a good fit. The crew members replace the grate, then slowly drive the truck forward in the far left lane, hugging the median strip. As Minter drives the VacAll, Rush walks behind and uses the vacuum tube to clean up loose debris in the curb pan. At the next basin, less than a block away, they repeat the cleaning procedure.
This scene plays out often on Milwaukee County streets and highways. The county highway department is responsible for countless catch basins across hundreds of miles of roadway — so many that it can take up to two years to clean them all on a regular cycle. The backbone of the catch-basin cleaning program is a small fleet of VacAll VS16C trucks.
Workhorse vehicles
The vehicles are definitely among the county’s workhorses, according to Bill Tietjen, Milwaukee County fleet manager. They perform catch basin cleaning mostly around other regular duties, such as cleaning up debris during highway construction (see sidebar). When the construction season gets extended, thanks to mild weather, as happened in 2007, catch-basin cleaning has to wait, says Chuck Smeltzer, Milwaukee County highway maintenance manager.
The VacAll vehicles are equipped with Cummins 350-hp diesel engines. Each has a 16-cubic-yard debris tank and a hydraulic pump delivering 12 gpm at 2,200 rpm. A 350-gallon polyethylene water tank rides behind the cab, served by a 120 gpm/75 psi pump that sends water through a 3/4-inch, 25-foot-long hose and accompanying nozzle, used to dislodge debris when needed.
Each truck is also equipped with a 12-inch-diameter, 10-foot-long hose, along with tubes four, six and eight feet long to attach to the vacuum hose. The different-sized attachments suit the wide range of catch-basin configurations and other tasks the maintenance crews encounter.
Other accessories include a reverse, bell-shaped leaf nozzle that opens the standard 12-inch hose to 20 inches in diameter for leaf pickup, and a reducing cone to allow 8-inch tubes to be attached to the standard hose. For catch-basin cleaning, the units are supplemented in tough situations by a Camel sewer jetter from Super Products LLC, according to Tietjen.
The VacAll fleet consists of three newer models, two from 2001 and one from 2006. A fourth unit is on order. A couple of older models from the 1990s, both originally equipped as well with street-sweeping brushes, remain in the fleet for special use.
Easy maintenance
Mark Cesar, service supervisor for Milwaukee County fleet management, oversees the maintenance that keeps the vehicles ready for service. The truck operators daily grease the moving parts, including the boom. “We do a major inspection every four months or every 4,000 miles,” Cesar says. “We give them an oil change, check them over, lube them up and fix anything wrong with them.” The sewer jetter also is on a four-month/4,000-mile maintenance schedule.
Between servicing, operating crews are charged with keeping the machines clean. That usually doesn’t require much more than a thorough hosing out, Cesar says. The highway department has strong incentives for the staff to stay on top of the cleaning process. “If they forget to do something, we direct-charge them, and they don’t like that,” Cesar says. “So they’re pretty efficient.”
With tight municipal budgets, the county fleet doesn’t have a regular schedule for replacing its vehicles, according to Tietjen. Instead, it operates them as long as possible, periodically replacing a vehicle as budgets permit.
Eyes and ears
As department em-ployees go about their duties around the heavily urbanized county, they take note of areas where catch basins appear clogged or need full-scale repairs, not just cleaning. “We check our inlets on a continual basis,” Smeltzer says. The county’s street sweepers also continually watch for evidence of clogged catch basins. Other road crews do the same.
Every Thursday, highway maintenance supervisors meet, review their always-expanding to-do list, and set priorities, Smeltzer says. If there aren’t already known problem sites, “the supervisors pick a roadway out and schedule a crew to check the inlets.” Then it’s off to work for the crews.
“The guys are the eyes and ears of the whole highway department,” says Derwin Pottinger, a county highway maintenance supervisor. “When we’re cleaning them, we also do an inspection. We want to make sure the drains are flowing freely.”
Pottinger says dry leaves — a common obstruction in fall — are easy to handle. Add water, and it’s another story. “The worst conditions are when all of the muck gets in there and it is full from the bottom of the basin to the grate,” he says. But that doesn’t happen often. “We pretty much stay on top of ours, so that’s very seldom a problem.” Leaves are the most common debris, says Smeltzer, but empty bottles and cans turn up regularly.
Handling repairs
It takes about two years for the department to go through the entire inventory of basins for inspection and cleaning. Cleaning is also the first line of defense in uncovering bigger problems. Cleaning crews occasionally come across catch basins that require a complete overhaul.
As roads deteriorate, for instance, water that seeps beneath them can build up behind the walls of a basin until it collapses. Or clogged basins can accumulate water that freezes and thaws through the winter, ultimately destroying the basin housing. Problems like these may go unnoticed until a cleaning crew comes along, at which point workers alert the highway department and set in motion a full-scale repair.
Even then, the VacAll units come in handy. The first step to rebuilding a basin is to tear out the old one, and out comes a VacAll truck. “It’ll get the basin cleaned out enough so we can bring the air hammers in and chisel out the concrete,” Pottinger says.
With 17 years on the job, Pottinger says nothing much fazes him. “I’ve probably seen almost anything in a catch basin that you can probably see,” he says. That includes raccoons. One precaution he takes is to wear jackets with elastic cuffs to keep rodents or bugs in basins from leaping to safety and crawling up his arms.
Fall remains the big season for cleaning, as the autumn leaves pile up under the grates. Left untended, they can collect water from rain and snow, freeze and melt in the winter, clogging the lines and potentially damaging the basin structure. The highway department plows streets curb-to-curb so the catch basins don’t get covered up by snow and can more effectively drain snowmelt, Pottinger notes.
All in a day’s work
Back on Mill Road, the crew is finishing up. Bill Luzinski uncoils a hose and uses it to loosen some stubborn debris at the rim where the grate will rest atop the basin once the job is complete. Then he and his co-workers return the grate to its proper location.
Less than three hours into their shift, this crew is finished with catch-basin work for the day. Their next job: helping out a highway construction project. As driver Tony Minter puts the VacAll in gear, Luzinski and Pottinger follow in separate vehicles. And once again, the basins on Mill Road are free and clear to collect stormwater and snowmelt as the seasons turn.
