Street Sweeping

The Division of Infrastructure Management's Street Maintenance Section sweeps streets from early April through the last week of October. The street sweeping program is focused on mitigating environmental concerns to prevent pollution from entering our waterways and to advance the city’s sustainability goals.

The City of Columbus has updated its annual street sweeping program to ensure an equitable approach to cleaning debris and pollutants along curbed streets before they reach local streams and harm water quality.

The update coincides with the Department of Public Utilities seeking renewal in 2022 of the city’s Municipal Separate Storm System, or MS4, permit, required by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Most areas of the city have separate sanitary and storm sewer pipes. Storm sewer discharges to streams, rivers and lakes with no treatment.

The Ohio EPA recognizes street sweeping as a pollution prevention practice. Sweeping helps to improve water quality. It addresses two pollutants of concern — sediment and phosphorous — affecting local watersheds, including the Olentangy River, Big Walnut Creek and Big Darby Creek.

The permit renewal process has given the city an opportunity to develop a data-driven approach to street sweeping.

Using data from the Division of Refuse Collection’s annual Litter Index of all city streets, additional sweeping will occur on residential and arterial streets in high debris zones to prevent litter and pollutants from entering storm sewers and harming water quality.

Street Sweeping Fact Sheet(PDF, 589KB)