Too soon for city’s leaf collection?

With trees still full of leaves, resident thinks early removal is ‘a colossal waste of money’

When is the right time for the city to begin using trucks and front-end loaders to scoop up leaves raked to the curb for collection?

After most of them have fallen from the trees, or so you’d think.

But the mechanical leaf collection program, which began this week, seems to be well ahead of schedule, judging by the number of leaves still on the trees on many streets that qualify for it.

The service is provided in heavily treed parts of Etobicoke and Scarborough, where the sheer volume of leaves requires an extra effort to ensure they’re cleaned up before they can block storm drains.

The city’s website, toronto.ca, says the service supplements “yard waste collection in a few areas with heavy leaf accumulations and in neighbourhoods with roadside ditches to prevent ponding, flooding and road icing as a result of blocked culverts and catch basins.”

But a resident of Parkcrest Dr. says a swarm of equipment and workers with rakes and shovels arrived on his street earlier this week, when most of the leaves had yet to fall from the trees.

Rick Watt sent us a note and photos of Parkcrest, saying, “with temperatures of 25 C only 10 days ago, there’s very few leaves on the ground as you can see from the attached pictures.

“This has also happened in previous years and I have contacted my councillor several times in the past, asking that the program be delayed for at least a week.

“I also contacted a manager in the garbage department who simply said the program could not be changed. I also spoke to some of the crew this morning, who emphasized that they have advised her boss numerous times that there were no leaves for them to be picking up.

“This seems like a colossal waste of money.”

We checked out Parkcrest and saw that most of the leaves are still on the trees.

And we spoke to a yard maintenance guy using a leaf blower on our street (which also qualifies for mechanical collection), who said he thinks the fall of the leaves is indeed late this year. Status: We contacted transportation services, which handles mechanical collection, to ask why the program doesn’t seem flexible enough to take into account the number of leaves still on the trees. Here’s the answer: “As with any program the city executes, we need to plan and resource accordingly. Mechanical leaf collection needs to be completed prior to snow falling. Once snow begins to fall and accumulate, the leaves become buried and the machines cannot collect them. Also, once there is snow and ice on city streets, the Toronto crews and contractors will begin winter operations. We have had an unseasonably warm fall, but temperature could drop suddenly and we could get snowfall at any time. If the leaf collection program is suspended due to an early snowfall, we will not resume leaf collection and any remaining leaves will have to be collected for pickup on the regular yard waste collection days.” Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.