In ancient times, city's dreamed of having streets paved in gold.

Every fall, Ironton's streets are paved with orange, red and yellow as residents and employees scramble to clear the roadways of the remnants of fall.

City workers began this week working to clear the loose leaves burying the curbs and pickup bagged leaves that line the city's streets.

"This maintains our streets as safe thoroughfares," said Mayor John Elam. "It also prevents our catch basins from becoming leaf collection points. It is a part of the Environmental Protection Agency's mandate."

Streets superintendent Mike Pemberton said residents often rake their leaves into the streets leaving a multi-colored mess for the city to cleanup.

"I won't recommend it but in the past resident have raked them into the streets," he said. "I am not telling them not to do it or to do, but it has been a practice for years."

Pemberton and city officials would prefer residents bag their leaves and leave them with their trash or separately if there are lots of bags, take the leaves to the compost pile behind Moulton Field or drop them in the dumpster behind the city garage that is available from

7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

No concrete schedule has been made but Pemberton said the will move through the city as quickly as possible.

"If we had two or three more people in the street department we could do it all immediately," he said. "It is just not going to happen right now."

Elam said the leaf cleanup will continue throughout most of November as the leaves continue to fall.