‘No parking’ may spread for street sweeping

June Casagrande

About a third of the city’s streets are designated as no-parking

zones for a few hours each week for street sweeping. Soon, these

parking restrictions could be much more widespread.

The city’s Coastal/Bay Water Quality Citizens Advisory Committee

might recommend that the city restrict parking on more streets during

street sweeping times. The idea, committee members say, is to

intercept litter before it gets into the storm drains.

But first, they’ll have to pinpoint the areas where the parking

restrictions would help.

“One example of a place where we would not want to do it is

someplace like the Port Streets,” Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff

said.

Most people in this inland Newport Beach community park in garages

or on driveways, he said.

“There’s so little street parking going on there that anything a

street sweeper doesn’t pick up one week because a car’s in the way,

it will catch next week,” Kiff said.

This is in stark contrast to a place such as the high-density

Balboa Peninsula, where cars regularly line curbs. The peninsula is

the site of most of the street-sweeping parking restrictions in the

city.

Corona del Mar, though, is a good candidate for review, said

Dennis Baker, a member of the city’s water quality committee, because

the area has become more popular.

“Are there stretches of road there where it’s evolved into a

situation where everybody parks in the street? Those are the things

we’d want to find out,” Baker said. “We want to move carefully like

this to be sure we’re not wasting resources.”

Street sweeping could more aptly be called street vacuuming, Baker

said, because the large machines actually suck up litter.

The idea emerged as the committee has considered its priorities

for 2004. Other ideas that could make their priority list include

implementing tiered water rates to discourage waste, upgrading the

pump-out stations where boaters discharge sewage from their boats’

holds, and introducing new technologies such as permeable pavement

and sprinkler timers that prevent runoff.

“It’s a constant battle,” Baker said.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at

[email protected].