From this week’s Galway City Tribune – The sins of the past are to be washed away as Galway City Council begins a new daily street washing regime.

The Spring Clean in advance of next weekend’s St Patrick’s Day festivities follows significant criticism of the city’s cleanliness during last year’s peak season.

The Council commenced a “trial deep clean” of the streets on Wednesday with crews targeting high-traffic areas including Williamsgate Street, Shop Street, Abbeygate Street, High Street and Quay Street.

According to a spokesperson for the Council, the works involve a tractor and tanker soaking the streets with water alongside a “bio-friendly degreaser” which will remove dirt, grease and grime when brushed by road sweepers.

The works get underway daily at 5am and continue through to 8am and the Galway City Tribune has learned that if successful, the scheme will become a permanent fixture in the daily street cleaning regime.

“We would like to see it extended beyond this initial month,” said the spokesperson.

“This is a different type of washing to what we’ve had before. It’s not power washing but we want to see what level of splashing there is and go from there.”

Councillor Níall McNelis (Lab) said the city clean-up was good news, describing Galway as “a diamond that needed a bit of polishing”.
This is a shortened preview version of this story. To read the rest of the article, see the March 10 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can support our journalism and buy a digital edition HERE.