heavy equipment services

DRAIN MAINTENANCE

STORM WATER

STORM WATER FUNDED

Mailing Address

125 N. Main Street – Room #608 | Memphis, TN 38103

Phone

901-636-6762

Email

pubworks
@memphistn.gov

M-F

8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m

Drain Maintenance
City of Memphis Drain Maintenance is responsible for providing routine inspection, maintenance, and emergency repairs to the existing public drainage systems within the City’s right-of-way or approved drainage easements. Generally, these drainage systems are made up of major and minor channel lined ditches, pipes, or other related infrastructure.
 
Drain Maintenance performs repairs to public drainage infrastructure. This includes emergency repairs to public drain pipes and concrete lined channels, removing blockages in concrete channels and drainage culverts, repair or replacement of inlet grates and manhole covers.
Our department receives, on average, 4,600 service requests per year. We service approximately 56,000 drainage inlets, 1,839 miles of underground drainage infrastructure, and 158 miles of concrete channel lined ditches.
Common reasons to contact the 311 call centers are to report clogged or blocked storm drains, repair or replace missing inlet grates, and to request blockages from City maintained storm drainage channels (typically concrete lined systems).
 
Drain Maintenance works with other depts. within Public Works and the city to determine causes of cavities on city streets, removal of debris and trees from the right of way/ city streets and assist in storm preparation such as snow and ice events.
Heavy Equipment Services
Heavy Equipment Services provides a broad range of services to various departments in City Government. These services include street sweeping, roadside ditching, special projects, demolition, and snow and ice operations.
 
The Street Sweeping Operation is responsible for cleaning the gutter lines throughout the City and ensuring that debris does not block storm water flow or enter streams and channels. The department also minimizes damage to traveling vehicles by ensuring foreign objects such as nails, rocks, and glass are kept off City streets and out of our waterways. On average, the department sweeps 300 miles a week. Street sweeping requests can be made through the 311 call center.
 
Heavy Equipment Services uses equipment to grade and clean road side ditches on public streets without curb and gutter that have become filled in with silt or other debris and assists in the removal of debris and obstructions from concrete channels.
 
Heavy Equipment Services provides specialty construction related services including demolition, major excavation, earthwork, and heavy cleaning of drainage infrastructure.
During inclement weather, Heavy Equipment Services assists the Street Maintenance department with deicing and anti-icing processes.
 
Heavy Equipment Services is often called upon to provide support services to other departments, divisions, and public agencies, particularly in the area of Emergency Response whenever there is a need that requires the expertise and use of various types of heavy equipment, such as fire calls and removal of debris from illegal dumping sites.
Flood Control (Sewer)
The Department of Public Works Flood Control Program is responsible for the maintenance and inspection of the levee, flood wall and pump station infrastructure that protects the City of Memphis during periods of high Mississippi River stages. Historically flood events and elevated flood stages occur November through May each year.
 
Personnel involved with Flood Control inspect, operate and maintain 20 miles of earthen levee, 2 miles of concrete floodwall consisting of 30 gate closures, 643 acres of reservoir, and 7 flood control pumping stations that are placed into service at various elevated river stages. Day to day duties include grass cutting, pump maintenance and inspection, levee and flood wall inspection, and during flood events, manning and operating the pump stations 24 hours a day at particular river stages. As the Mississippi River stage rises, flood gates are closed at the 7 Flood Control pumping stations in order to prevent river water from flooding inside the levee. Once gates are close, storm water gravity flow is shut off to the river and all storm water must be pumped over the levee back to the river. Furthermore, in more extreme rises of the river, crews are dispatched to close gate structures within the floodwall to further secure the levee.
 
Flood control personnel works along with Environmental Maintenance and Drain maintenance to ensure proper drainage to keep the water flowing freely. In addition, the U.S Army Corp of Engineers consults and inspects on the levee condition, maintenance, and appropriate permitting. The flood control personnel and infrastructure are vital for the protection of the City of Memphis and its citizens during flood events.
 
Storm Water (Sewer)

The City of Memphis Stormwater Department was created in 1996 and is concerned with the quality of the water that passes through the City’s storm water drainage system because the storm water drainage system is supposed to ONLY carry storm water; it is commonly connected with our creeks rivers and streams. This drainage system directs the flow of storm water away from our businesses and homes. In a City as large as Memphis, it has become common for pollutants (such as litter, yard waste, sediment/dirt, grease, oil, paint, and pet waste) to enter the storm water drainage system in rain events, either unintentionally (carried with rain to the storm drain during a rain event) or intentionally (directly placed into the storm water drainage system). Directly putting a pollutant into the storm water drainage system is an explicit violation of City Ordinance 4538. Pollutants impair the quality of surrounding natural water bodies that storm water discharges into. Pollutants also affect the function of the storm water drainage system by corroding or clogging it, thus disrupting the flow of the storm water. It is up to us to keep our City clean to avoid this.

Therefore, the Storm Water Department is charged with imposing controls in reducing pollutant discharges into our storm water drainage system to the maximum extent practicable (MEP).   We are a federally mandated program through the Clean Water Act (CWA), which is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), in accordance with EPA rules, issued the City of Memphis a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit which requires the City to develop and implement a storm water management plan to control the quality of storm water runoff discharged to the storm water drainage system within our jurisdictional area.  This is accomplished through public outreach/education, public participation/involvement, identifying and eliminating illicit discharges to our storm water drainage system, reviewing erosion prevention and sediment control plans (as well as post-construction runoff control plans), conducting inspections of active construction sites, conducting inspections of private retention/detention basins, conducting inspections of municipal facilities, and conducting ambient sampling of waterways.

To learn more on how you can help prevent storm water pollution or report illicit discharges which is a violation of City Ordinance 4538, visit Memphis Storm Water – Only Rain Down the Storm Drain!