DOUGLAS - Thumbing through a magazine, Steve Martinez and Jim Sullivan came across pictures of a special machine designed to suck up leaves from city streets, crushing the flora into tiny pieces for easy transportation and composting.

They could really use something like that, the men thought. Sullivan is streets and alleys supervisor, and Martinez is a maintenance worker at the city's public works department.

Fall cleanup, especially in the older parts of town where cottonwoods shed leaves like crazy, took weeks each year. In a time-consuming task, crews would use street sweepers to gather up the debris - but would have to break every few blocks to empty the leaves into a Dumpster.

But this machine was something else. Surely a leaf vacuum that breaks down the debris could save time. And, of course, time is money. Sullivan and Martinez were sold, but one little thing stood in their way: a $20,000-plus price tag.

"It was a pretty expensive piece of equipment," Sullivan said. "We didn't have it in our budget, but we really would've liked to have one. So, we built one."

With the blessing of City Hall, Sullivan drew up plans and Martinez worked his magic.

"This thing sucks 'em up and pulverizes 'em," Sullivan said with a grin, explaining how the machine works.

Named after Martinez, whose nickname for years has been "EZ," the EZ Leafer runs on a conglomeration of salvaged and new pieces. An old piece of oil field pipe disposed of at the landfill was given new life as a blower housing. Martinez had fins cut to specifications, welding those to a plate that rests in the oil field pipe housing. When they took the piece to Casper to be balanced, the spinning parts came within only a gram of perfect - amazing precision for a welder, Sullivan said.

A dilapidated lawnmower, once used to groom city parks, provided a working motor. Martinez welded a frame to mount the three-cylinder diesel motor, while a public works mechanic, Bob Munsinger, wired the beast.

The ground leaves and twigs are sucked into an 8-inch-diameter vinyl hose reinforced with steel, then shredded in the housing by those fast-moving fins. The debris ends up in a snow box mounted on a truck. The box expands the bed's carrying capacity from 6 yards to 15 to 20. A net cover avoids creating additional work for the sweeper, which follows the EZ Leafer. Once the truck bed is full, crews cruise to the landfill and empty the load into compost piles.

Eventually, the leaves, along with grass clippings and branch trimmings, evolve into prime dirt that's free to residents.

Now, what used to take weeks takes a couple of days.

"We can go probably at least six times farther with this thing than we can with a street sweeper," Sullivan said. "We can do a block in, oh, 15 to 20 minutes."

Sadly, Martinez couldn't be there for the maiden voyage of his namesake. But he did receive a phone call as he recovered from surgery. On the other end was Sullivan, holding out a cell phone so Martinez could hear the EZ Leafer suck up the leaves.

"EZ built it," Sullivan credited his co-worker. "He did all the fabrication. A lot of my ideas went into it, but he made it happen."

Sullivan estimated the total cost, with shop time, hit $2,500.

That resourcefulness and the machine's efficiency earned the Wyoming Association of Municipalities' Innovation Award, presented at the association's annual meeting in June. The pair will accept their accolades from the city council at tonight's meeting.

"They just took bits and pieces, a motor from here, some hose from there," City Administrator Bobbe Fitzhugh said. "I would put our public works department crew up against any in the state. They're very creative, they're very resourceful, they're very innovative. And they always have an eye out for the bottom line, and for how they can do things more easily."

This isn't the first innovative equipment the public works crew has crafted to meet the specific needs of the city. They hand-crafted all the Christmas decorations which hang from city light posts each holiday season, using scrap metal. They designed a special jig to cut their own street sign brackets, finding a solution to the quick destruction of the standard designs in the Wyoming wind. And years ago, they built a railroad track using landfill dirt and scrap rails to move a half-dozen historic train cars from the state fairgrounds to the chamber of commerce.

"We've got some pretty innovative people," Sullivan said. "We look at something long enough, we can figure out how to make it work."

He admitted that's getting a little harder with many of the older employees retiring and talented mid-range staff leaving for better wages at the coal mines or the railroad. But, he figures he and Martinez have a few more years to train the younger generation in the can-do mindset, noting they already have some great ideas.