Trash Haulers Move
Mountains, Yet More To Go
November 07, 2005 — By Diana Moskovitz and Phil Long, Miami Herald
That mountainous mess of Wilma debris
filling your front yard and killing your grass is not going to vanish
overnight.
Think more like New Year's night -- perhaps later.
It may be 2006 before all the trash from Wilma is gone from South
Florida, waste-management officials in Miami-Dade and Broward counties
say.
When it's gone, state, federal and local officials will be dividing up a
removal bill that could hit $500 million, based on early estimates.
The good news is that workers from Deerfield Beach to Florida City are
already busy whittling away at the growing piles of roadside rubble, and
more crews are being added daily.
Joe Ruiz, Miami-Dade assistant county manager, figures cleanup crews
will be done with their first pass down streets in the unincorporated
areas by Thanksgiving, and the second pass will be finished by
Christmas.
In Broward, gathering all the trash will probably take through December,
said Odette Brown, spokeswoman for the county's Waste and Recycling
Services.
"We're busy. Really, really busy," Brown said.
Hurricane Wilma's winds left behind about four times the debris Katrina
did -- more than 18 million cubic yards.
That's enough palm fronds, oak branches, ficus trees and other assorted
junk to fill Dolphins Stadium to the brim -- nosebleed seats and all --
plus another nine stadiums the same size, said Dr. David Bloomquist, an
engineer at the University of Florida.
That kind of trash is easiest to handle, officials say, when residents
separate the piles of vegetation from man-made trash.
On Hialeah's northwest side this week, Dixie Gamble arrived home as city
worker Jose Luis Gomez and his nine-blade front-end scoop finished
attacking a six-foot-high pile.
The cleanup took care of one problem that has made living without power
worse, she said. "The night is very dark here and with the piles you
feel so closed in."
The removal process is much the same throughout South Florida.
Government crews, private contractors or a combination of both are
hitting the critical and most heavily traveled roads first, then getting
roads around schools, hospitals and other essential facilities cleared.
Virtually all of that has been done and workers have turned their
efforts to residential streets.
A typical crew operates from first light until dusk and is made up of
some type of mechanical front-end loader with a special scoop, and
sometimes up to three transfer trucks to keep the scoop busy.
In most cases, the first stop for the debris is a makeshift transfer
site. There, workers toss out the metal and concrete and as much
construction junk as possible, then throw the vegetation into
high-powered "hammermills." These grinders spit out a steady stream of
mulch, which is scooped up and packed into trucks. Some goes to
landfills, though much is burned as fuel in small electric power plants.
Susan Heiden's neighborhood in western Dania Beach has its roads
cleared, but piles of debris are stacking up in front of homes. Heiden
said she can't wait for crews to finally get to her neighborhood and
clear it.
"It's more than just piles. It's like foothills," she said. "It's really
something."
Even after the first sweep on many streets, more debris will still find
its way to the curbside as residents keep finding more to clear, said
Paul Winkeljohn, assistant city manager in Weston.
"The problem is you get through one pass, and debris is still coming
out," Winkeljohn said. So the question is whether to do another pass.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency generally pays 75 percent of the
cost of debris cleanup, with the state paying 12.5 percent and local
governments the remaining 12.5 percent.
With nearly a third of residents in Florida living in gated communities,
some with private roads, there is some tension over whether FEMA will
reimburse local governments that pick up debris inside the gates.
Local governments got a bit of hope this year from a FEMA memo outlining
guidance for reimbursing debris pickup from gated communities and
private roads. It said removing debris from them could be eligible for
reimbursement if the garbage is considered a safety threat and the local
government has the legal responsibility to protect the area.
The memo outlined several requirements, among them that debris be placed
in the street or right of way, that there be unrestricted access to the
debris by removal crews, and that the road be used for regular public
services like school buses and mail delivery.
Herald staff writer Wanda J. DeMarzo contributed to this report.
Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
|