San Francisco lawmakers are poised to dig deeper into safety concerns inside the city’s $72 million street-cleaning program after the board’s president called for a government hearing on Tuesday to address the issue.
"I'm asking for a Public Works safety hearing on their street-cleaning truck operations," said Board President Norman Yee, who delivered those remarks at the weekly board meeting. "[The hearing] is an opportunity for the department to present their safety improvement plans in response to the NBC Bay Area Investigative report."
Yee’s call for action comes in the wake of an NBC Bay Area undercover investigation that revealed city vehicles are frequently overloaded with trash during routine trips across town to the city dump.
The NBC Bay Area investigation also exposed safety violations and unsafe practices inside Public Works, including a lack of straps, tarps, and ropes on street-cleaning vehicles that should be utilized to prevent cargo from falling onto the roadway, according to state safety laws.
Ignoring such regulations can put workers and residents at risk of injury. Falling debris from vehicles results in 50,658 crashes, 9,805 injuries, and 125 deaths each year, according to a 2016 study by AAA.
Following the NBC Bay Area report, state investigators with Cal/OSHA announced the results of its own safety probe and cited Public Works after finding the city’s street-cleaning program “failed to establish and implement effective methods or procedures to correct the unsafe condition of overloading…street cleaning trucks.”
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The state’s findings reflected what the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit exposed just days earlier. The state citation also noted other safety violations, including clogged drains near a truck washing area, which forced some workers to wade through “standing water with floating used syringes and other unsafe debris.”
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Public Works and it's ballooning multi-million dollar street-cleaning budget has been the subject of more than a dozen NBC Bay Area reports over the past year, including investigations surrounding questionable government contracts and allegations of mismanagement.
Public Works has until early March to appeal the citation or pay the $1,200 fine. The department has yet to commit on its next steps with Cal/OSHA, according to Public Works spokesperson Rachel Gordon.
“That decision has not yet been made,” Gordon wrote in an email.
“We are still meeting with them.”
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Watch the entire series of this NBC Bay Area investigation:
- Part 1: Dangerous Mix of Trash, Needles, Feces Found in Downtown SF
- Part 2: Investigation into SF's Diseased Streets Goes Viral
- Part 3: SF Man Steps on Hypodermic Needle, Demands Action
- Part 4: San Francisco's 'Clean Streets' Plan Gets Messy
- Part 5: Empty Shops Rising in San Francisco, 'Dirty Streets' Partly to Blame
- Part 6: SF Mayor Vows to Veto $1.1 Million 'Street Cleaning' Plan
- Part 7: San Francisco's $65 million 'Street Cleaning' Budget Raises Concerns
- Part 8: SF Mayor Targets Dirty Streets with $12.8 Million Cleanup Plan
- Part 9: SF Prepares to Open Nation's First Supervised Injection Center
- Part 10: SF's "Dirty Streets" Scare Off Long-time Convention
- Part 11: SF Paid Firm $400k for Data Claiming City is Nearly Spotless
- Part 12: SF Mayor says City is Cleaner Under Her Administration, Despite Rising Complaints
- Part 13: San Francisco Sidewalks Graffitied with what Looks Like Feces
- Part 14: How Do You Picture San Francisco?
- Part 15: San Francisco's Street-Cleaning Trucks Overloaded, Unsecured
- Part 16: State Investigators Question Employees at SF Public Works
- Part 17: SF Public Works Fined for Safety Violations
- Part 18: SF to Investigate Safety Concerns Inside City's Street-Cleaning Program
- Part 19: SF Street-Cleaning Crew Still Overloading Trash Trucks
