Debris cleanup in Palm Beach County is about a third of the way done, as the Solid Waste Authority is still hopeful to have everything cleaned up within three months.
There are some areas around town where cleanup can’t happen fast enough. The king tides are starting to reach those piles and it’s got a homeowner nervous.
So far, Chris Mosca has had two pile picked up, as a third one sits outside his home along Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach post Hurricane Irma.
“Trust me, we got no complaints, the city has busted their butt cleaning up, it’s just we got the combination of all these things happening at once,” he said.
As these piles wait for their day at the dump, the King Tide take what it wants, twice a day.
“It’s one thing if it’s a palm frond, another thing if somebody’s hydroplaning and there’s two or three coconuts underneath their cars. I can’t imagine what that would do,” he said.
The good news so far, Solid Waste Authority spokesman Willie Puz says, beside the high tide, there hasn’t been any lingering flooding to slow down pick up.
“We want residents to continue separating piles,” he said. “We have collected more than 970,000 cubic yards of debris,” so far.
Puz says theres around three million cubic yards of debris to pick up. That’s about the same volume as one and a half million refrigerators.
Crews only get paid by the truckload. Nine dollars per cubic yard delivered, so they’ll generally work through the rain, unless it’s unsafe.
“If there’s lightning and thunder, odds are the trucks aren’t going to be rolling down the streets,” Puz said.
Back on Flagler, the hope is no coconuts are rolling down the street.
“I don’t know that anybody’s to blame, it’s just a dangerous position to be in,” Mosca says.