Fairfax County promises improved vacuum leaf collections

After major delays in vacuum leaf collections last year, the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services has made several improvements to ensure leaf pickups go smoothly during the upcoming leaf season.

In some cases, leaves were picked up a month late. By the time the vacuum trucks showed up, the wind had blown them back into residents’ yards.

Only a small percentage of Fairfax County residents have county-provided vacuum leaf collections, but those areas are mostly concentrated in Mason District. View the map for details.

At a virtual community meeting last week, Eric Forbes, deputy director of DPWES and head of the Solid Waste Management Program, acknowledged, “The vacuum leaf season last year didn’t go as well as planned.”

“We told everybody to put their leaves out early, but we didn’t make it in a timely manner,” Forbes said. “Some customers didn’t have their leaves picked up until December. We can’t have that again.”

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He outlined a series of steps the agency is taking to improve efficiency and customer communications.

DPWES added two vacuum leaf tag-along units, for a total of 10. Those units are trailers that hold the leaves sucked up by the vacuums. Five new county trucks were added, too.

“We’re investing in the program because we know it’s going to continue in the future,” Forbes said.

A quality-control procedure is being put in place, calling for photos to be taken before and after leaves are collected. Surveys will be conducted to assess the volume of leaves on curbs to help the agency plan ahead.

In another change, only two areas will be serviced at once, which Forbes said “will allow us to move through neighborhoods more quickly.” Inspections will be done before a crew moves to the next area.

He said the biggest improvement for this year calls for leaves to be temporarily dumped at Pine Ridge Park in Annandale, rather than having trucks waste time transporting them to the I-66 Transfer Station and the I-95 Landfill Complex. Pine Ridge Park is much closer to the areas served by county leaf collections.

Related story: County backs off plan to eliminate vacuum leaf service

Communications with customers will be improved, so residents will have accurate schedules of when leaves are collected, Forbes said. The schedule will be posted on the agency’s dashboard when the season starts, so customers will know when to put their leaves on the curb.

Signs will again be posted in neighborhoods, and the agency will share messages on Nextdoor.

Forbes also described some of the issues that led to the service problems in 2024:

• A new collection model called for the crews in all four collection areas to start out at once. At times, there were 10 crews in a community at a time.

“We were spread too thin, especially with the high leaf volumes we had early on in Round 1,” Forbes said. “It bogged down our crews and hurt our ability to collect leaves efficiently.”

• There were communications problems, he acknowledged, “so we over-promised and under-delivered. And we definitely learned from that.”

• High leaf volume and dry weather were problems in the fall. “The dryer the leaf, the more truckloads you have to haul,” he said. Dry leaves are fluffy and take up more space than wet leaves, which are more compact.

• Then, in January, leaf collections were paused due to snow and extremely cold temperatures.

Forbes offers the following advice for customers:

• Leaves set out on the curb shouldn’t be more than four feet from the edge of the street.
• Don’t put branches, rocks, or other debris in leaf piles, as they can cause the trucks to break down.
• Don’t put leaves next to parked vehicles, storm drains, fire hydrants, or mailboxes.