How Philadelphia washes out graffiti artists

Things have been a little discouraging lately for graffiti artists haunting the streets of Philadelphia. Many of their favorite canvases — concrete retaining walls, overpasses and noise barriers — are now protected with durable polyurethane coatings, which make it easy to remove spray paint and other graffiti.

The coatings are being used successfully on the Vine Street Expressway, a two-mile, below-street-level highway that allows traffic to feed smoothly to the waterfront and historic sections of the city, as well as on the “Blue Route,” a 22-mile portion of I-476 located just outside the city that connects the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the Philadelphia airport area.

Among the coatings used in the two projects are tough, easy-to-clean polyurethane systems made by M.A. Bruder & Sons, Broomall, Pa. The coatings are formulated with Desmodur polyisocyanates manufactured by Bayer Corp., Pittsburgh.

The polyurethane coatings were specified for both projects “primarily for their graffiti-deterrent properties,” says Harvey Knauer, acting district manager for District 6 of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). “We wanted permanent coatings, not sacrificial ones, that would stand up to graffiti removal.”

In addition, the coatings help maintain the appearance of the concrete. Painted in 1991 and 1992, the concrete surfaces are holding up “very well,” Knauer says. “Painting concrete isn’t like painting metal. We don’t expect to ever have to completely repaint the concrete.”

In terms of graffiti deterrence, “the coatings are definitely doing the job,” says Joseph Nowakowski, a maintenance services engineer for PennDOT. “They seal off the concrete and have made it quite easy to wash away graffiti.”

PennDOT uses jet blasts of water to remove the graffiti. “We find that a high-pressure wash-down, combined with some scrubbing, removes most graffiti from the coated concrete,” Nowakowski says.

Without the protective coating, the graffiti works its way into concrete, and, he explians, “we end up blasting off a layer of concrete in order to strip off the graffiti.”

Fast, complete removal of graffiti helps put a quick stop to more graffiti, according to Nowakowski. “People want their graffiti to last. If it’s gone in a week or so, they start looking for somewhere else to vandalize,” he says.

The graffiti-free surfaces look good for another reason as well. “For the Vine Street project, we wanted to brighten up the concrete retaining walls to make them more aesthetically pleasing,” Knauer says.

The 12-foot-high walls are coated in a light beige earth tone that adds “warmth” to the sunken section of highway, he says. Along the Blue Route, aggregate panel side walls have a pebbly texture.

These walls are coated with three coats of the polyurethane intermediate coat pigmented in a light gray or beige color. The clear topcoat provides a hard, protective sheen.

PUBLIC SAFETY

Pastors on patrol: one city’s solution in fighting crime

The Kirkwood (Mo.) Police Department has added a Chaplains Program to its list of community and employee services. The program involves four area pastors who will work with the police department in a variety of ways including:

* offering counseling to Kirkwood residents who have suffered a loss;

* attending Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) graduations;

* counseling department personnel;

* offering prayers at official gatherings involving the police department; and

* riding with police personnel out on the streets of Kirkwood.

The four ministers who have volunteered for the program will work on rotating shifts, each providing about eight hours of service per month.

DARE Officer David Donohoo will serve as the coordinator of the program, overseeing the pastors during their time at the station. He will be in charge of scheduling chaplain events as well as setting up organizational meetings between the chaplains and the police chief.

Police Chief Dan Linza praises the program, noting it is something the department will use. “Officers need a place to go when they have personal problems. They need someone they can talk to, knowing that their conversations will be held in the strictest confidence,” he says.

In addition, Linza believes that the program will be a great service to the community when officers respond to a situation where residents have been faced with a tragedy. In those cases, when a pastor is riding with an officer on duty, or when a pastor is “on call,” residents will have the opportunity to spend time with the pastor.

The program is designed so that each pastor can “take off with on a personal level,” Donohoo says. “I am encouraging each of them to use their own ideas and personal interests to make this program work.”