Street Department personnel wrapped up three days of trimming trees in certain areas of the city Wednesday. The work was done to remove branches on some of the streets where paving will be done later in April.

“We had to go out and trim some of the trees out so that our paving equipment doesn’t get caught in the tree limbs,” Elkins Street Department Supervisor Shawn Akers told The Inter-Mountain Wednesday. “Some of our heavy paving equipment is pretty high, especially some of the dump trucks. We had to get this done before we did any paving.”

Akers said the department worked on a total of 11 streets this week, from which they collected two dump truck loads of chips. The chips will be delivered to a lumber facility on Kelly Mountain.

Akers said paving will begin sometime around April 18 once Spring Cleanup for Elkins has concluded. He said that there are 28 areas that will be paved throughout the city.

City of Elkins workers removed branches this week on streets where paving will be done in late April.

Spring Cleanup, meanwhile, will get under way on Monday and run until April 15. Street Department crews will visit each ward in the city to collect certain items from residences at no charge.

No more than a level pickup-truck load will be accepted from each household. Items that will not be collected include: appliances, tires, free flowing liquids, batteries and yard waste.

“Old couches, mattresses, anything like that we will take,” Akers said. “It takes a good crew to be able to accomplish all we do with the Spring Cleanup. Last year we collected 155 loads throughout the city. We are going to have some other departments helping the Street Department out wit this as well and we greatly appreciate it.”

Those using the service are asked to have all items at the curb in front of their house or building no later than 5:30 a.m. on the pickup days.

Crews will not return to a certain area after they have already come through on an assigned date.

Residents are asked to bag or box smaller items and crews will not collect loose trash. The scheduled days for pickup are: First Ward (April 4-5); Second Ward (April 6-7); Third Ward (April 8-11); Fourth Ward (April 12-13); and Fifth Ward (April 14-15).