New ‘beautification’ street cleaning plan introduced in Prince George’s County

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (DC News Now) — A new cleaning initiative is underway in Prince George’s County as newly cemented County Executive Aisha Braveboy officially announced her “beautification” plan for the county.

The plan will work in tandem with Prince George’s County Department of Public Works and Transportation to keep the county in top condition.

Braveboy, along with other county leaders, gathered Wednesday at the DPW&T building in Upper Marlboro with a line of street sweepers surrounding the cul-de-sac.

“I ran for this very important seat, I promise, to focus on the needs of our residents and to elevate our county,” said Braveboy. “And the first step in that is to ensure that our roads and our streets are beautiful. As beautiful as the people who live in the county.”

Michael Johnson, director of the Department of Public Works, said the county will be broken into 24 sweeping zones to help keep county streets clean. He says that progress has been made by the thousands of pounds.  

“They go to a different zone, and then they repeat that for the month,” said Johnson. “We’ve collected a tremendous amount to deliver the 600,000 pounds so far. So we are on track to pick up, I would say, more than 1 million pounds of that,”

The county will have more street sweepers and crews working into the weekend as well. Braveboy commended the public works crews for working in the high heat to bring this cleaner vision to light. 

Braveboy and Johnson also say residents will be key to making this work. By contacting DPW, residents can alert them to high litter locations. 

“DPW is a service department, and we exist to serve the public,” said Johnson. “We have ideas on what we should do, but really, it’s not as complete as if we have any feedback from our residents.”

This service blitz started on Monday and will continue well into the next year.