If you’ve seen sewer inlets in the MSD coverage area, you may have noticed color dots on the covers. We started marking inlet covers with a dot of green spray paint about 15 years ago to signify that the inlet had been cleaned.
If you’ve seen sewer inlets in the MSD coverage area, you may have noticed color dots on the covers. We started marking inlet covers with a dot of green spray paint about 15 years ago to signify that the inlet had been cleaned. This helped MSD track the inlets that had been cleaned, and it helped us keep track of the work that we had performed. Eventually, we have ended up with a green dot on every inlet cover in the combined sewer area and on many inlet covers in the separate sewer area. These dots ranged in color from bright green to faded green. Tracking inlet cleaning became difficult because of the various shades of green. So, in 2009, we started using a gold dot to show the inlet had been cleaned. We simply placed a dot of gold paint next to the green dot, creating a cleaning history on the inlet cover. This year, we used purple. For 2011, we will be using blue paint. That way, you can look at the inlet cover and know when the inlet was cleaned. Inlet cleaning color history:
- 2008 and prior – green
- 2009 – gold
- 2010 – purple
- 2011 – blue