Spencer Sanitation Department

About Spencer Sanitation Department

Behind Spencer's houses, where the alleys run narrow between garages and the trash and recycling carts wait for a truck long before most of the city is awake, a snowfall causes a different kind of trouble than it does out on the wide streets in front. The Spencer Sanitation Department clears those alley routes so its own collection trucks — and the carts waiting at the end of every driveway — can still get through on schedule after a storm. An alley holds snow tighter than an open street, with garages and fence lines squeezing what little room there already was, so the same route that takes an hour on Grand Avenue can take most of a morning back among the alleys. Getting every alley open before the collection trucks start their loop keeps Spencer's ordinary Tuesday running the way it's supposed to, storm or no storm. Clearing the alleys first means the rest of Spencer's routine can go on not noticing that a storm happened at all.