Taste the ick with every lick!
Longing for a scoop of Peppermint Pavement? Perhaps a double-scoop waffle cone with Sour Sewer and Stinky Green Cart? While our new Public Works Ice Cream flavours may not tempt the tongue, they’re sure to turn heads (and noses!)
Learn about public works (and how our crews keep Nanaimo running smoothly) with our new public works-inspired ice cream flavours; taste temptations so grotesque, they're unreal! (seriously, they aren't real...)
Our sensational flavour lineup begins with everyone's new favourite pie-topper:
Flavour #1: Vanilla Vacuum Truck! It’s not the worst tasting ice cream, but wow, it sucks! The City’s flusher/hydrovac truck is super powerful and can be used to suck up water and materials into its 7500 litre tank! But it isn’t just for excavation – it works in reverse too. Crews can fill it up at a fire hydrant and use the water to blast away blockages that may be clogging up sewer and storm pipe lines. Once, the City even used the truck’s vacuum to remove a football-sized hornets nest!
Flavour #2: Green Light Lime! If it tastes like ‘go’, you’ll be happy to know that all of Nanaimo’s traffic lights are programmed for efficiency. Staff study traffic flows at each intersection, considering time of day, speed, safety, direction, pedestrian and cyclist use, and volume of traffic. Many of our intersections are equipped with detectors that monitor traffic and adapt traffic light timing to help keep everyone moving. And notice how there is a public-art-wrapped cabinet at each of Nanaimo’s lighted intersections? These house the electronics that control the traffic lights!
Flavour #3: Yellow Line Banana! It’s icky, sticky, and will leave you feeling sicky! Inspired by the painted lines on our streets, this flavour may seem simple, but it's all about traffic safety. Our crew uses a special paint truck equipped with a guide laser, helping the driver to follow the existing yellow and white street lines as the paint goes down. Did you know? That shine from those lines under a car’s headlights isn’t just a natural sheen. The City adds fine glass beads to the paint for added reflective safety!
Flavour #4: Caramel Cardboard! This is perhaps the easiest Public Works Ice Cream flavour to digest. It’s full of fibre! Wood fibre, that is. Cardboard packaging from an online order, a cereal box, or the robust box from a new appliance? It can go in your blue cart for pickup at the curbside. Just make sure it fits! Squish down those small boxes, and for large boxes, break them down to two feet square or smaller pieces. Don’t want to break it down? Take it to one of Nanaimo’s local recycling depots for free drop-off. Check out our Waste Wizard to search for a drop-off location near you! What Goes Where
Flavour #5: Rootcheer! This year’s international Public Works Week theme is ‘Rooted in Service, Powered by Community’. So, three Rootcheers for our Public Works department! Hip hip, hooray! Hip hip – you get the idea. Some work we can see all around us, like recycling collection and road work, while other contributions are hidden, like maintenance for Nanaimo’s water and sewer systems. Clean water at the turn of a tap; dirty water disappearing with a simple flush – it isn’t magic, it’s public works! As a team that is rooted in service, Nanaimo’s crews keep it all flowing!
Flavour #6: Pickled Pothole! While major paving projects are done by contractors, the Public Works team takes care of patching potholes and smaller sections of roadway. The asphalt plant only runs in the warmer weather seasons, so sometimes it can feel like forever before an annoying pothole gets patched. Our team also has a milling machine, which can remove just the top of the damaged and cracked asphalt, reducing the time and material required to lay a section of nice new roadway.
Flavour #7: Sour Sewer! This flavour really goes the distance. There are more than 520 km of sewage pipe beneath our city’s streets, carrying the waste from our sink drains and toilet bowls all the way to the Greater Nanaimo Pollution Control Centre in Hammond Bay. Imagine that! Now imagine if that piping system was clogged. Ewww! Our Public Works CCTV (closed-circuit television) team monitors and maintains these oh-so-important poo pipes. By using a state-of-the-art remote-controlled camera system, they can navigate the pipes, find and fix a clog or find a potential leak for repair.
Flavour #8: Strawberry Storm Drain! There are 605 kms of storm drainpipe that move rainwater and melting snow straight to the ocean. We think that’s berry cool. Strawberry cool! Heads up though: storm drain water is untreated, which is why ONLY natural water is allowed to flow through the system. Please don’t dump anything down these drains! The fish thank you.
Flavour #9: Sweet Street Sweeper! Whenever we vote for a flavour favourite, this one’s a clean sweep! Sweeping is about more than clean streets; it's about protecting our underground storm system by removing debris before it enters through drains (which can cause blockages or service issues!). Our sweepers follow a regular schedule and respond as needed before and after storms. We also use our sweepers when they’re available to support a cleaner and more beautiful city.
Flavour #10: Maple Flapjack Fleet! It takes a lot of vehicles and machinery to support a city with over 110,000 people, and it all needs to be maintained to keep it safe and operational. The City of Nanaimo’s fleet includes over 200 vehicles, ranging from small commuter vehicles to refuse trucks, bucket trucks and a range of multi-purpose trucks that can even plow our city streets in a snowstorm. Our Fleet team also manages and maintains equipment like lawn mowers and trimmers, ice resurfacers, a milling machine, and even the City’s fleet of fire trucks!
Flavour #11: Cinnamon Snowplow! Most people love ice cream in the warmth of the summer, but on a cold, snowy day, this is everyone’s favourite flavour. It tastes like clear roads! The City has a variety of different-sized trucks that it can equip with plows and even belly plows (plows between the front and back axles). When the plows take to the streets, staff prioritize emergency routes and main roads first, followed by secondary routes that lead to these main roads. Third priority routes such as culs-de-sac and no-exit streets are done last. The City would love to be able to plow every road all at once, but this strategy helps to keep our City moving in the best way possible. Did you know? All of the City’s plows are also equipped with salters and briners, which the City uses to treat our roads before ice forms!
Flavour of the Day: Coconut Coliform! If you haven’t heard of coliforms before, you aren’t alone, and if there’s coliforms in your ice cream, you really don’t want it. Coliforms are bacteria that can be found in food, soil and in the aquatic environment. Coliform bacteria aren’t necessarily harmful, but they are easy to measure. They’re found in large numbers in the feces of warm-blooded animals (including both people and dogs!), and if they’re found, they’re an indicator of the presence of dangerous pathogens.
During the warmer months, Public Works staff actively test and monitor popular outdoor swimming spots such as Westwood Lake and Departure Bay Beach. By using easy-to-test coliform bacteria levels as a guide, staff can monitor the overall health of the water. Ever wondered why dogs aren’t allowed on these beaches during the swimming season? This is why!
Testing for fecal coliforms takes place at Brannen Lake, Colliery Dam Park, Departure Bay, Long Lake, Swy-A-Lana Lagoon (Maffeo-Sutton Park), and Westwood Lake.
Disclaimer: Public Works ice cream flavours are not real and are not available. And if they were, yuck! This message brought to you by the City of Nanaimo’s Sanitary Sewer team.
Come back and read on as this blog grows throughout May & June 2026!
