Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey there, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. Visiting New Orleans during Marty Gras is certainly on my list. The food is amazing, and by all accounts, the costumes are dazzling, the energy exciting, and the music phenomenal. And of course there are those colorful, exactly gaudy enough beads, tons and tons of beads. People throw them a passers by and tossed them from the elaborate parade floats to be worn and treasured as souvenirs.
The beads are as much a hallmark of Marty Gras as the Kingcake, also known as throws. They've been around since the nineteen twenties. That's wheen a few of the crews the groups that planned the celebrations parades started handing glass beads out to parade goers lining the streets. But these festive beads have caused quite a severe headache for the city's public works department. Since September, workers have been painstakingly cleaning tons of discarded Marty Gras beads from the
city's catch basins. In fact, they've sucked out some than pounds that's forty six tons or forty two metric tons along just a five blocks stretch of the popular downtown parade route on St. Charles Avenue. Private contractors working under a seven million dollar grant have collected nearly seven point two million pounds that's three thousand, two hundred and sixty five metric tons of debris from fifteen thousand of the
city's sixty eight thousand catch basins. The money is part of a twenty two million dollar emergency project by the city's Department of Public Works designed not only to clean but also fixed the city's damaged basins. Nearly twenty four vacuum trucks started cleaning them after widespread flooding last summer. Marty Gras will be in full swing in the weeks leading up to Fat Tuesday, which falls on February eighteen, and the city is hoping residents and visitors will help
prevent beads and other debris from clogging the drains. To that end, the city has been teaching people how to clean the catch basins in their own neighborhoods, and city workers are also considering covering the basins with so called gutter buddies. At least until Marty Grazo. For these are filters that look a bit like pool noodles and are made with synthetic fibers woven to allow water to flow
straight through, but to catch sediment and debris. And since they're washable and reasonable, they might be a wise investment for future years. So, as they say in New Orleans, laze le bon or let the good times roll. Just don't let those Marti grab aids roll down the city's drains. Today's episode was written by John Partano and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more on this and lots of other festive topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com