Take a walk around MSD’s coverage area, and you’ll probably notice colored dots on the inlet covers.
Take a walk around MSD’s coverage area, and you’ll probably notice colored dots on the inlet covers. These dots show us when the inlet was cleaned. This helps MSD track the inlets that were cleaned, and it helps us keep track of the work that we performed. For years, we used green paint to mark the inlet covers after cleaning. Eventually, we 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 range in color from bright green to faded green. Tracking inlet cleaning became difficult because of the various shades of green. So, in 2009, we changed colors. We used a gold dot that year 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 blue paint. For 2012, we will use silver paint. You can now look at the inlet cover and know when the inlet was cleaned. Here is the inlet cleaning color history:
- 2008 and prior – green
- 2009 – gold
- 2010 – purple
- 2011 – blue
- 2012 – silver