The city of Hinton Public Works Department has a lot on its plate.
Still, in the midst of cleaning up demolition messes along several town roads, the public works employees have also installed a new basketball hoop at Bellpoint park, constructed and installed handrails on sidewalks with steps around the courthouse square and Temple Street and helped unload a truckful of food (1,200 boxes on 26 pallets) for scheduled free food distributions at Lifeline Church on Stokes Drive.
Over the past month, the department replaced a manhole, cleaned and replumbed aeration tanks at the sewer treatment plant and urged everyone to be careful about flushing wipes.
“Flushing baby or disinfectant wipes can quickly block sewer pipes and cause major plumbing problems in your community’s sewer or your home’s septic tank system. They can impact entire communities and cause large-scale sewer damage, or create major problems in your septic tank system,” officials from the treatment plant said in a post on Facebook.
A photograph posted on the department’s Facebook page offered an unpleasant insight into what the crew extracted from a ‘wipes clogged’ sewer line. Even if packaging states wipes are flushable, all wipes present a major nuisance. according to department officials.
The recently planted cherry trees around town, beautification compliments of the city tree board, will be maintained by the public works department.
The city has just posted a schedule for city-wide clean-ups in April centered on Arbor Day and Earth Day activities.
Over the coming weeks, the schedule is “April 13 and 14 public works will clean up to 10th Avenue; April 16 and 17 public works will clean up 10th Avenue to 2nd Avenue; April 19 Public Works to clean up 2nd Avenue to the bottom of Avis Bridge and April 20 remaining work in Avis. Spring Clean-Up moves into Lower Bellepoint to Zion Mountain Road April 21 and 22; Zion Mount to Summers County Hospital April 23; and, a volunteer litter pick up will be held April 24. Couches, furniture and perishable items ALLOWED, and any other loose trash will need to be bagged. The posted schedule information from the City of Hinton includes an underlined statement, “No Tires No Paint No Chemicals”.
In addition to the city’s schedule above, Public Works Department head Billy Dan Gill said the next focus for the department will be cleaning the streets with what he said is the “best piece of equipment we have,” the street sweeper the city purchased about five years ago. Gill explained the streets of Hinton used to be swept by hand with brooms.
