(Washington, DC) In the past couple of weeks, thousands of trees in the District’s residential areas began the annual process of dropping their leaves into yards and onto houses, driveways, sidewalks and cars.  As part of its annual operations, the Department of Public Works (DPW) deploys personnel with leaf vacs and leaf blowers, packer trucks, dump trucks and roll-offs to tackle the daunting job of removing these leaves from public space.

A brochure containing the detailed leaf collection schedule was mailed to households across the District to give residents ample time to plan for leaf season.  This year, the program lasts from November 1, 2004 through January 8, 2005 and is expected to pick up over 10,000 tons of dead leaves.

Residents can take advantage of this effort by clearing leaves from their own property and bringing them out to the curb.  For more efficient collection of leaves, each ward has been divided into collection zones.  DPW will use large machines to vacuum loose piles of leaves from curbside tree boxes on each street, in each zone, at least twice.  Additionally, residents may set out bagged leaves with their regular trash at curbside and alley collection sites.  However, bagged leaves may take longer to collect.

After collection, the leaves are added to a huge compost pile at the Ft. Totten Trash Transfer Station at 4900 Bates Road, NE.