The Storm-Drain Diaper

…Catching a lot of crap!

A couple years ago I volunteered to help clean the trash from my neighborhood creek/park (note: the acronym NAVY means ‘Never Again Volunteer Yourself’). Well there was a lot of trash which mostly came from up hill from the neighboring shopping center. It is a shame that people throw trash on the ground. I guess they expect other people to follow behind them to pick it up. In the old movies people, mostly men, would throw cigarettes on the ground to be cool. Think of children walking around and pick up a cigarette butt. That is disgusting. Some still throw it on the ground at the golf course. Go figure. And the shopping center should be responsible for litter on their site to prevent it from going into the storm system. Then there are the homeowners. Some just throw stuff over their fence which adjoins the creek/park. Why would they do that? There is ample county pickup available.

The Storm-Drain Diaper is just a plain old chain link fence. First, I found some scrap fence on my neighbor’s yard that backed up to mine. They said I could have it if I wanted it. Second, I cut the fence in half. Then I tied each end to end and before you know it, it looked like a baseball diamond. With the storm pipe as home plate the game was ready to begin. My first mistake was to tie down the diaper with huge rocks from the creek. Then came a ‘100-year flood’ and semi-totally washed away the diaper. That hurt my feelings and I almost scrapped the crap. Then it hit me, the Navy’s oldest shank, an anchor should prevent it from flowing down stream and it worked. We haven’t had a 100-year flood yet, but hopefully she will hold. Meanwhile I go down and check on it about every third rain. It works great. I must separate the leaves from the trash, but it is a lot easier to pick up the trash there then to go all the way down the creek.

Perhaps this Storm-Drain Diaper can be used in multiple storm outlets. They do require periotic maintenance. It would help also if people didn’t throw trash on the ground. And with some people with trucks it blows out of the truck bed. You can’t change that diaper. #knucklehead