Debris pick up in Columbia County is halting for the holidays.
In an update provided on Dec. 23, Columbia County Manager Scott Johnson, said the trucks will resume picking up debris after the new year. In the video, he gave an end-of-year update on where Columbia County is regarding debris pick up.
The cleanup began on Oct. 3 with four trucks and one debris site, which wasn’t enough, but he said the county wanted to get the ball rolling as soon as possible.
“As we ramp up, our contractor got up to around 40 trucks,” Johnson said. “We were hauling debris much more rapidly, and they were averaging about 20,000 cubic yards a day. We did that for, I guess, a majority of the time we’ve been picking up debris and 20,000 cubic yards of debris a day is actually pretty good. But not when you’re in a situation like we have in Columbia County where we have so much on the ground. We knew we had to do better.”
Johnson said they have been working with the independent contractors Debris Tech and Ceres to make the process more efficient. And that has paid off.
“I’m very happy to report now that we’re averaging 47,000 cubic yards a day and those four trucks that we started with and one debris site, has grown to 45 trucks hauling to 12 different sites,” Johnson said. “I think we’re doing a good job there. As of today (Dec. 23), we’ve picked up a little more than two million cubic yards of debris.”
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When compared to the ice storm of 2014, Johnson said back then the county picked up 569,000 cubic yards of debris in 62 days and received a little over $12 million in reimbursement from the federal government. He added the county learned from that experience and ensured there were contracts in place for debris cleanup of future events.
“As with Helene, obviously it’s a lot more debris, but we had every contract in place, we were ready to go,” Johnson said. “Like I mentioned, we were picking up debris just days after the storm hit and have been continuously ever since.”
In the first 80 days following the hurricane, Columbia County had over two million cubic yards of debris picked up, Johnson said. He added that this could not have happened without the hard work of the staff at Columbia County.
“I can’t give enough kudos to engineering services, our county engineer, that entire team, our GIS, everybody working in IT,” Johnson said. “We have gone above and beyond to come up with heat maps to help to make zones that these trucks could work in…we were having problems with roads not getting picked up completely and we heard from you. We said okay, we’ve got to do a better job of picking up the entire road once we get started. I think we’ve done a much better job of doing that.”
As for what’s next, Johnson said there is still approximately four million cubic yards of debris on the ground waiting to be picked up. He added there are over 300 center lines miles of road in the county and every road will get cleaned up. The goal is have the first round of cleanup done by the end of February.
Johnson said that big items, such a root balls and large trees need different equipment and will be done on the second pass, which will begin after February. The goal is to have the second round of debris cleanup done by April.
“Again, there’s not guarantee, lots of things could happen,” Johnson said. “We could lose trucks (or) another event could happen.”
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Cost of cleanup
As for how much this will cost Columbia County, Johnson is authorized to spend up to $50 million to pick up the debris. Johnson said the county is expecting reimbursement from the federal government, but to get that, things must be done in a certain way.
“That’s why it’s so important we do this the exact, right way where we can only pick up in certain areas, we can only pickup on public right of ways,” Johnson said. “The FEMA guideline books on this are volumes of books, are huge amounts of rules and regulations and I know some of you are a little frustrated because you may have heard a commissioner say we’ll get yours and then the staff came back and said we can’t get that. We’ve got conflicting information from our FEMA representative, but they’re working with us hand-in-hand now to make sure we can get all this debris and get reimbursed for it.”
As of Dec. 23, the county has not received any reimbursement and has filed for expedited funding, Johnson said. He has been assured the money is coming, but the cost is going to keep increasing.
“But we’re on the hook already for $50 million. Folks, that’s not going to be enough. I really think this event is going to cost the taxpayers in Columbia County more like $100 or $120 million. That’s 10 times more than what we saw in 2014 in the ice storm. So, we have to make sure that we’re doing everything perfectly according to he rules, the guidelines, dotting every I, crossing every T, because we can’t put our taxpayers in Columbia County on the hook for $100 million. We have to do what we can to make sure we get this reimbursement from the federal government.”
Johnson added that even though the trucks are taking a 10-day break due to the holidays, the debris sites will continue turning the debris into mulch. In fact, this break will allow for them to catch up on destroying the debris.
To view the full video, visit the Columbia County – GA Government YouTube page.
