To Clean a Catch Basin

The town has 850 catch basins in its network of stormwater collection basins.

All of them collect stormwater such as rain and snow melt from streets and other impervious surfaces and channel the water to outfall pipes for release at King's Beach, Fisherman's Beach, Phillips Beach, Preston Beach and elsewhere, said DPW Director Gino Cresta.

The catch basins get cleaned out periodically, each one, on average, once every two years, the DPW director said. We recently caught up with Dave Gustavsen on DPW who was cleaning a basin on Humphrey Street by Yan's Chinese Bistro.

He was using a very long-handled shovel, called a spoon to dig out some of the dirt at the bottom or sump of the basin.

He also used a mechanical device that lifted out the debris and dropped it in the back of a truck.

Each basin has a sump of one or two feet at the bottom where dirt, sand and other debris sink and collect to prevent the outlet pipe from clogging, he said.