Most people love fall — the cooler temperatures, the beautiful autumn foliage — but one thing many homeowners hate is having to clean up those dropping leaves from their yards. City officials particularly also don’t want them clogging storm drains and causing localized flooding. So they are encouraging local homeowners to rake up the leaves and dispose of them.

To help with that and to keep those leaves out of storm drains South Salt Lake offers each household five free leaf bags which can be left at the curb for free pickup on regularly scheduled garbage pickup days.

The city is also asking local residents for help keeping the storm drains clear with its Adopt-a-Drain program where residents can adopt a drain by their home and help keep it clean throughout the year. Over the last 18 months, the Adopt-a-Drain program has collected 604 pounds of debris, and 104 storm drains have been adopted but with hundreds more storm drains in the city there’s still plenty of work to be done, SSL spokesman Joseph Dane said.

Those who adopt a drain get to name it and keep track of it. In exchange they agree to clean it out once a quarter. They can then track the impact by inputting debris data on the website at sslc.gov/447/Adopt-a-Drain for more information.

Major storm drains in highly trafficked areas are generally off-limits.

“So you can't adopt a storm drain off of State Street because we don't want anybody getting hit,” Dane said. “But you can go look for available storm drains on your road or by your road.”

The program is adapted from one by the Center for Global Environmental Education at Hamline University in Minnesota. Several other Utah communities including Salt Lake City, Draper, Ogden and West Jordan are part of the larger Salt Lake County Stormwater Coalition, which coordinates efforts to protect waterways and prevent flooding across the county by having residents and groups adopt storm drains to keep them clear of debris. 

“We had a really great response when we first started,” Dane said. “We just don't have the staff to go around and monitor every single storm drain that we have so it’s a fun way to try and get people engaged.”

Educating residents so that they understand how critical it is to keep storm drains clear is an important benefit of the Adopt-A-Drain program, he said.

“It's important for people to know that, not only should we not be dumping paints and oils and chemicals down storm drains, for obvious reasons, [but] too much organic matter getting into our water streams breaks down and creates a lot of nitrogen, which isn't good for wildlife,” Dane said. “So it's actually just as important to keep all of our organic matter like leaves and sticks out of the storm drain system as well.”