Question: I recently moved into a house on 10th Avenue in Palolo with manual refuse collection. My immediate neighbors also have manual service, but everyone else has automated service. My property is now a dumping ground because people know the trash collectors will take anything in front of my house. How do I get automated service?
Answer: The problem is of access, not only for the trucks, but for people who park along 10th Avenue.
The city has not converted about 15 percent of its customers to automated refuse collection for one or more of the following reasons, said Markus Owens, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Services:
>> Lack of a turnaround area. The automated collection trucks — the side-loaders with “arms” — need space to turn around to service both sides of a dead-end street.
>> A too-narrow roadway. The side-loader needs about three to four feet of space from a cart for the gripper to grab it, and the cart can’t be placed too close to a fence or a wall that could be damaged by the gripper.
>> A short one-way street. The city did not convert these streets to automated collection.
However, the right sides of long one-way streets, such as the one-way streets in Lanikai, were converted, with the left sides continuing to be serviced manually.
>> Narrow lanes that can’t accommodate the side-loaders and residents taking their trash to the “main roadway.” This describes your situation, Owens said.
In such cases, officials considered how many families live along the lane.
Where you live, there are 10 families along two narrow lanes. There wouldn’t be enough curb space on 10th Avenue if too many carts from the lanes were placed out there, which in turn would mean restricting parking.
However, when the city converted to automated collection, the loss of on-street parking was one concern voiced by the neighborhood boards, Owens said.
The city told the boards that it would restrict parking only if it was necessary to allow its trucks to pass through a roadway — which is the same requirement for manual collection, he said. “We have kept this commitment to the neighborhood boards.”
In your situation, “It would not have made operational sense to convert three homes that adjoin the main roadway … when we have seven homes needing to be serviced by manual collection,” he said.
Question: I recently read that watering your lawn during the day results in up to 50 percent of the water being wasted because it simply evaporates before it can be absorbed into the ground. Well, I’ve been at Kapiolani Park recently around noon, and the sprinklers were on all over the park. Does no one in the Parks Department know about when to irrigate and the water being wasted?
Answer: The city Department of Parks and Recreation “is very concerned about the conservation of water,” said Craig Mayeda, administrator of Parks Maintenance and Recreation. “As a rule, watering in the parks is not done after 10 a.m.”
He said you observed the midday watering probably after a large weekend event.
“The watering is shut down a couple of days
before the event to prevent the area from being too wet and becoming damaged from the large number of people walking on the grass,” Mayeda explained. “After the large events, the park plays a little catch-up by watering the areas that need more water during the day.”
That all said, “All staff have been reminded to be aware of limiting the watering of our grass during daylight hours.”
Mahalo
To staff at the city Property Tax Relief Office, 530 S. King St., and especially to Ermalyn, who helped me fill out my forms for the third year. — Grateful Senior Citizen
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