Can Naperville’s Drain Defenders Rescue City Officials

It’s been said that given a sufficient amount of time anything that can happen will happen. It didn’t take long for it  to happen in Naperville. November 25th, the day the Trifecta of Nature occurred;  rain, snow, and ice, on top of piles of leaves on the streets of family-friendly Naperville.

It was a beautiful sight, unless you had to drive or had leaves neatly piled at curbside. Over one-third of Naperville’s residents, primarily on the south side of town, still have leaves in their streets, but no longer neatly piled at curbside. The snow plows made sure of that by re-distributing the mess, much of which will find its way to Naperville’s street drains, where they may still be sitting until spring or when Naperville’s newly formed army of resident drain-defenders get to work with their rakes and shovels pushing it elsewhere.

Naperville’s curbside leaf collection program includes three leaf collections; one every two weeks scheduled to end this year on November 30. It ended five days early when Naperville had to convert all of its 22 trucks for snow plowing. So residents were left with wet leaves and soon to-be clogged street drains which can lead to flooding in spring.

Naperville city officials knew this could happen, but other than forming an army or likely a gang of drain-defenders, they did nothing to increase their odds of successfully keeping the streets clear of leaves. I don’t ever remember this being an issue when I was young, back when dirt was new. I do remember the autumn aroma of leaves burning, a sure sign that fall had arrived. I also remember the sound of fire engines racing through neighborhoods.

Naperville city officials (who are they?) did say that if storm sewer drains need to be cleared. the city can help if it becomes an issue. It would seem to be a good idea to do it now, rather than waiting until spring flooding.

Apparently it became an issue last Wednesday when enough residents complained to the city and on social media, and city officials had no choice but to reverse its decision to cancel the last leaf pick-up cycle, and decided to complete the third round of leaf pick-up.

So now it becomes a race between trucks converted for leaf pick-up and trucks converted for snow plows intermixed with garbage and recycling trucks, along with drain defenders against lots of frozen and wet leaves which have been plowed all over the streets and squashed by cars, trucks, and school buses.

City officials said via a Naper Notify message, “Please note, depending on this winter’s weather, this may take into the early months of 2019 to complete.” That’s code for “it may take all the way to the beginning of next year’s first leaf pick-up.”

In the meantime, let’s hope the army/gang of drain defenders are up to the task of working overtime and have the ability to dodge trucks picking-up leaves.