POMPANO BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - Florida is dealing with a statewide debris dilemma. Trash has been piling up fast after Hurricane Irma, and Floridians are fed up that cities aren’t being cleaned up.
Companies have been hired to remove all the hurricane debris, but officials are saying workers aren’t getting the job done.
The debris pickup contractors, however, have said it’s not that easy. They said they have subcontractors, and those subcontractors want more money, so they’re trying to renegotiate the contracts they have with the cities.
According to the contractors, the cleanup will take four to six months.
“The fact of the matter is, we don’t control the commodity, and that is the truck,” said Randy Perkins from AshBritt Environmental. “When you have a Hurricane Harvey or you have a Hurricane Irma, that’s impacted six states, it’s going to require 8,000 to 10,000 trucks, just in the State of Florida, to make a meaningful difference over the next 30 to 45 days.”
Many cities are renegotiating to get the trucks moving and the debris out.
However, according to the contractors, the size of this particular storm was so large that the demand is unprecedented. “You have to [consider] that 48 counties implemented state of emergencies, and you may have somewhere approximately a thousand cities within those boundaries,” said Ron Bergeron with Bergeron Emergency Services. “You could have up to 100 million cubic yards of debris. That is catastrophic.”
Many cities have blamed their contractors, saying they demanded more money than the predetermined contract prize.
Pompano Beach’s contractor told city officials, due to emergency circumstances, they needed to renegotiate the original trash pickup contract, demanding more cash per cubic yard.
Shortly after the city agreed to the contractor’s demands, it received 40 trucks for debris pickup purposes.
“We’re going back to our cities and clients, and we’re laying out what we believe it’s going to take to get the cleanup done with our clients,” said Perkins. “I understand people are upset.”
But many subcontractors are dumping jobs, leaving and heading to where the money is.
“If you signed a contract with a county or city to do debris removal, do it,” said Florida Gov. Rick Scott. “I’m gonna support the average person here that says, ‘I want the debris picked up on my street.’ It’s a health issue, it’s an issue to drive around it, it’s an issue [because] we’re a tourism state, it’s an issue if we have another hurricane – what it’s gonna do to our facilities, our people, our power. So I expect all these debris removal companies to do their job.”
Bergeron currently has contracts with eight cities. He has not raised his prices.
“I’ve actually had probably 20 cities call me,” he said. “My response is that I have a certain amount of cities that I’m responsible to, and I don’t have the resources.”
Bergeron said he is placing an equal amount of trucks in each city to get the job done. He said this cleanup is going to take at least four to six months.
“We need some state and federal oversight to bring us all together,” said Bergeron.
It remains unknown if the Federal Emergency Management Agency will give the cities money back after they renegotiate the prices with debris collectors.
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