NewCanaanite.com (https://newcanaanite.com/tag/department-of-public-works/page/3)
Beginning Monday, Oct. 31 vacuum trucks will pick up the leaves raked to curbside by homeowners in those areas of town zoned for building lots of one acre or less. In those areas, please rake all of your leaves into the curb. DO NOT put leaves in plastic bags or mix them with brush or debris. The leaves are recycled into garden compost so they must be free of foreign matter.
Members of a nonprofit organization dedicated to beautifying New Canaan gathered Monday morning at Mead Park to thank their volunteers and town employees during an annual breakfast. About 25 representatives from the New Canaan Beautification League met at the colonnade with Department of Public Works employees to celebrate their longstanding collaboration to maintain plantings around town. The league’s co-president, Faith Kerchoff, said the organization’s services include creating 207 hanging baskets for the downtown, plantings at 33 traffic triangles in New Canaan and seasonal holiday wreaths, as well as overseeing a public garden off of Chichester Road. The league last week won town approval to demolish a single-family residence at the Lee Memorial Garden and replace it with a potting shed. “We have about 150 members with a core of 30 or 40 that are really ‘in the dirt,’ ” Kerchoff said on a bright, cool morning from the grassy area inside the colonnade, where a table had been laid with coffee cake, muffins and coffee.
Public works official have set Oct. 27 as the start date for curbside leaf collection at homes in areas of town zoned for building lots of one acre or less. Homeowners are asked to rake leaves to the curb for collection—not putting them in plastic bags or mixing them with brush or debris. According to a bulletin from the New Canaan Department of Public Works, the leaves are recycled into garden compost “so they must be free of foreign matter.”
“Debris or sticks will clog the vacuum trucks causing breakdowns and delays,” said a press release from DPW. “Leaves must be in a windrow, not in a pile.”
Residents in the 2- or 4-acre zones of town must compost the leaves on their own property—vacuum trucks will not collect in those areas, officials say.
The biennial dredging of Mill Pond is underway, an approximately $10,000 maintenance project that alternates each year with Mead. Mill Pond, which gets a far heavier sediment load from the Fivemile River than Mead does from the subterranean waterway that feeds it, additionally has a screening system called a “gabion weir” installed, according to Mose Saccary of the New Canaan Department of Public Works. “We put this in and the plan is if we keep pulling debris out of the weir, the rest of the pond will stay clear,” Saccary said. The pond—site of the popular annual fishing derby—had gone without a dredge for some 25 years until 2008, when a $1 million project was needed to clear the pond, just eight inches deep and sprouting weeds at the time. The contractor on the job is Norwalk-based Hussey Brothers Excavating.
The NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Baskin-Robbins, Connecticut Sandwich Co., Joe’s Pizza and Mackenzie’s. After becoming severely weather-beaten as a result of a late winter, athletic fields across the town saw delayed openings, frustrating parents and coaches seeking to get players on them as early as possible. During the season, parts of the playing fields get so much use that it makes sense for parks officials to swap in fresher sod from one area to another. On Tuesday, the Board of Selectmen approved $24,750 from the Department of Public Works Field Maintenance Fund to replace around 30,000 square feet of sod on fields throughout town. The unanimous 3-0 decision approves a request made by the DPW Parks Department to enter into a contract with Athletic Field Services of Bridgeport, which will be responsible for replacing the sod at a rate of 75 cents per square foot.