Evanston officials say trash pickup in the city won’t resume until Friday — and it will require an unprecedented effort to clear snow from the alleys to get it going again.
Public Works Director Suzette Robinson says that with the nearly two feet of snow that’s fallen in the city, the usual approach of not plowing and instead letting garbage trucks tamp down the snow as they roll through won’t work — that without plowing, this time the garbage trucks would just get stuck.
Even plows may have difficulty getting down some of the narrower alleys, she says, so part of the work of clearing the way will need to be done with front-end loaders.
Robinson says the plan is to make Tuesday’s collections on Friday, Wednesday’s on Saturday and Thursday’s on Monday of next week.
Then for next week’s collections the city will follow a typical Monday holiday schedule — with all collections occurring one day later than usual.
Update 8:22 p.m.: The city this evening announced a somewhat different schedule — with Wednesday’s residential collection on Friday and Thursday’s on Saturday — and with next week’s collections returning to their normal schedule. Apparently Tuesday’s collections actually were completed this week before the storm hit.
Refuse collections from condos that were scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday this week were actually completed on Tuesday. With the storm delays, Thursday’s collection this week will take place on Saturday and condos that would normally have had their refuse collect this Friday will have to wait until next Friday for pickup.
Robinson says this will be just a one-time exception to the usual no-plowing-of-alleys rule.