fourth of july followup: yep, it’s messy

July 7th, 2008 at 07:56am Jennie Pollock

regular reader hokumboy noted that the fireworks cause a considerable mess downtown.

boy, is he right. here’s the story we wrote about cleanup last year (but the photo above from alan leon is from this year):

Crews make quick work of 4th’s mess

ROCKFORD — About 125,000 Fourth of July revelers spilled out of downtown at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, leaving behind a colorful patchwork of trash. By dusk, the streets were lined with wrappers and soda bottles; trash swelled from packed garbage cans.

By dawn, the scene was dramatically different.

A small legion of street sweepers and garbage collectors hit downtown streets as soon as crowds had departed, Public Works Superintendent Bill Morr said. For six hours, 12 workers cleared trash cans and blew loose garbage into the street for sweeping.

Late-night workers devoted much of their shifts to downtown cleanup, and additional workers were called, Morr said. They started about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday and didn’t wrap up until 4:45 a.m. Thursday, just in time to spare early risers, shoppers and downtown businesspeople the celebration’s remnants.

Morr had not tallied costs of the Fourth of July cleanup, but he said it’s typically more than $1,000.

“That’s how I measure the success of the celebration, by how much trash we have to clean up,” Fourth of July Committee Chairman Joe Marino said.

Hardest hit were Ingersoll Centennial Park, downtown bridges, high-traffic intersections and other prime spots for fireworks viewing, Morr said. Public

Works crews placed about 20 trash cans along the parade route, but by day’s end they were either full or ignored.

“That’s the consequence of people who are very inconsiderate when it comes to trash,” Marino said. “We had containers, and I guess they missed the containers when they threw it.”

The cleanup effort was the product of several weeks of planning and even some precleaning. Crews swept and patched certain streets before Wednesday’s parade as a safety precaution, Morr said.

The Fourth of July is not the messiest downtown celebration, despite its size, Morr said. That could be On the Waterfront, which draws hundreds of thousands of people to Rockford’s downtown streets for three days around Labor Day.

By the numbers

125,000 People in downtown Rockford on the Fourth of July

20 Garbage cans along the parade route

6 Leaf-blowers

3 Street-sweepers

12 Workers cleaning up trash

6 Hours worked

Entry Filed under: Garbage