Pressure cleaning in Bankstown

At the 2021 Census, 58.5 per cent of the 10,980 occupied private dwellings in the suburb of Bankstown were flats or apartments and 30.0 per cent were separate houses.

Across the Canterbury Bankstown local government area, with 117,031 occupied dwellings, separate houses were 55.0 per cent, semi detached and townhouses 15.7 per cent, and flats 28.5 per cent. That is more apartments and more townhouses than the state average, and fewer houses.

So the work here is genuinely mixed: strata paving and car parks near the centre, townhouse driveways, and full house washes in the streets of houses.

The City of Canterbury Bankstown says water in its area flows into the Cooks, Georges and Parramatta rivers. It says rain runs off roofs, roads and footpaths and becomes stormwater that picks up pollution and debris on the way, and that in an urban catchment like this one most surfaces are hard and impermeable.

Council and Sydney Water jointly manage three floating litter booms in the Cooks River, which council says removed over 1,200 cubic metres of litter, sediment and vegetation in 2025. Council also monitors water quality at 18 sites, and its gross pollutant traps collect litter, oil, organic matter and sediment.

A litter boom on a river is the last step, not the first. The first is not putting wash water in the drain, which is where our containment goes before any water runs.