Columbia County debris cleanup is probably only halfway done

EVANS, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Four months after Hurricane Helene swept through the CSRA, we’re still seeing huge piles of debris that we expected to be gone by now – and Columbia County officials on Tuesday gave an update on how much more is left to be picked up.

Kyle Titus of Columbia County Engineering Services said Tuesday he thinks the debris pickup is halfway finished.

That shows just how long it’s taking to pick up the mess, since officials across the CSRA were aiming to have all the debris picked up within 90 days after the Sept. 27 storm.

That’s because that was the original deadline set by the federal government to fully reimburse local agencies. That deadline has since been extended.

But Columbia County has gotten serious about getting rid of the debris.

“When we first started, the contractor was kind of moving around somewhat haphazardly or randomly you may consider it, because there was so much debris,” Titus said. “They were just going out and grabbing what they could as fast as they could.”

That’s changed now.

“In the last 30, 60 days, we’ve been working with them to structure that,” he said. “So we’re getting on a better path.”

BY THE NUMBERS

Columbia County: A look at debris cleanup

1. One debris monitoring company
2. One disaster recovery contractor
3. Nine disaster recovery subcontractors
4. 17 debris management sites countywide; 10 are currently active
5. Over 200 hauling units in the county hauling debris and mulch
6. More than 45 pieces of large heavy equipment like excavators, bulldozers and loaders
7. More than 92 pieces of small equipment
8. More than 500 disaster recovery personnel boots on the ground

In Columbia County as elsewhere, residents were asked to move their debris and cut-up trees to the right-of-way along streets, and that’s where debris trucks pick it up and cart it away.

“So far, we’ve removed roughly 3 million cubic yards of debris from our right-of-way,” Titus said Tuesday afternoon in a media briefing. “We’ve estimated it to be a total of around 6 million cubic yards of debris, so we’re hoping we’re halfway there, but we have no way of knowing for certain at this time.”

To put that into perspective, that’s about 25,000 cubic yards per day – a cubic yard being about the size of a washing machine.

In the past 45 days, crews have accelerated their efforts to remove about 45,000 cubic yards per day, Titus said.

“We’re removing from the right-of-way and we’re trying to ramp up each and every day to get more resources here because you all know as well as I do how bad it is,” Titus said.

He noted that debris trucks won’t pick up just anything left by the curb.

If any debris is deemed not to have been generated by Helene, it won’t be picked up.

“If a pile has substantial green debris or you can tell that debris has not been dead long, the tree or whatever has not been dead long, it is going to raise red flags,” Titus said.

If that red flag is raised, someone will come out and inspect the debris to tell whether it’s from the hurricane.

And you can’t just rake your yard and dump it on the pile by the curb.

“I can’t clean up my yard, put it in a truck and haul it down the road and dump it on the right-of-way. If you’re caught doing that, you’ll be asked to remove it and if not, code enforcement will get involved,” he said.

The debris has to be from improved land and not wilderness.

“Say you own five acres of land and you only maintain one acre of that, and you want to remove all the debris from the other four acres, we’re not going to pick up that debris,” Titus said.

That’s what’s required by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is where the reimbursement is coming from.

Of course, garbage is a definite no-no.

“Household refuse or trash is ineligible and if it’s in a pile, it will be ed,” he said.

Also, “damaged fences is a big one,” he said.

“A lot of folks are calling saying that their debris pile is not picked up ... and it’s got fence boards or damaged fence or construction material in it. We won’t pick that up. We can’t pick it up,” he said.

So, what are you supposed to do with those things?

The same thing you’d have done if there wasn’t a hurricane, Titus said: Hauil it to the landfill of hire someone to do that for you.

It’s been a long road, and we’re not at the end yet, Titus said.

“What I’ve learned through this, what we’ve all learned through this, is there’s no one-size-fits-all,” Titus said. “Each one of these crews are uniquely outfitted with different equipment. Although I may have the right equipment to do this zone today, tomorrow I may need to bring in different equipment. It’s a living, breathing operation. It changes daily, hourly, by the minute. It’s always changing.”

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