I am following up on your inquiry with the Manager’s office regarding leaf collection service in the Donaldson Run area.  The leaf collection program attempts to optimize a finite amount of collection resources (16 vacuum trucks) to provide two vacuum collection passes to the 57 Civic Associations located throughout the County.  Crews work 10.5 hour days, six days a week to meet this goal.  The leaf collection program will collect approximately 40,000 cubic yards of leaves over a 2 month period.  The leaves generally fall at the same time throughout the County with some slight variations.  Our challenge is to efficiently collect this large quantity of leaves in the most expeditious manner.  Annually, we modify the program to achieve the best results.  This being said, there are several factors that impact our ability to stay on schedule which include weather, vehicle availability and leaf volumes.  This has been a very wet year which significantly slows down the vacuum collection process.  Leaves stick to the road and the vacuum systems are much less effective when vacuuming wet leaves.  The wet leaves also put additional stress on the equipment which leads to additional problems.  I provide this background so you get an understanding of the magnitude of the leaf collection effort.

As a result of the weather and some equipment availability issues, we have fallen behind our intended schedule.  We are working diligently to catch up and provide the best service that we can. We are currently vacuuming leaves zone 5 which Donaldson Run is a part of.   We are diligently working to have this zone completed by tomorrow.   Please accept our apologies for the delays and inconvenience.  

Linda Brown
Arlington County Government
Customer Service Call Center Administration Manager
Department of Environmental Services
Solid Waste Bureau
703-228-6488
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