AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – As residents grow increasingly concerned about the current state of debris cleanup, we’re taking a deeper dive into the city’s plans and where they stand today.

We are officially on Day 50 of cleanup in Augusta and Richmond County.

Crews comfortably collect and crush 35,000 cubic meters per day.

It’s a process they say they’re almost ready to move on to the next phase of cleaning.

The biggest question on everyone’s mind is when all the debris will be picked up in Augusta.

Steve Cassell of ISM Engineering is in charge of operations in Augusta.

He says that despite what we still see on the roads, they are half finished.

“We have about 135 trucks here and everything is going well. But I will say this: everything will be taken care of before we leave,” Cassell said.

Teams have collected and crushed $1.2 million of the estimated $2 million they expect to bring in.

Cassell says he understands residents’ confusion about the lack of consistency in truck locations.

But he says this is due to unexpected circumstances related to an operation of this magnitude.

“There are still a lot of public services down. You know, these are abandoned utilities, basically, they’re lying in piles. So they cannot remove them. They can’t pull those stakes if there’s utilities because it might bring down a pole or something,” he said. “We spoke to all the drivers. Let’s say you want to go out on the street and style the street, there are indeed monitors, but every truck has a monitor. They have assigned areas that they are supposed to pass through as they go. But you know, it’s also these trucks that break down. They sometimes have hydraulic problems. So we had several that fell. »

This is a long process, teams will need to revisit communities several times depending on what they are facing.

“Usually stumps are the last thing we pick up. There’s a special truck for that, and we have crews that go out and pick these things up,” Cassell said.

It’s a bigger job than the average trash pickup.

It will be difficult to set a definitive timetable just yet, but they are getting closer to finding the ending.

“We will complete the first pass in many of these areas over the next few weeks and move on to the second pass. So that will really determine what our final volume will be,” Cassell said.

Cassell says another challenge for them is the rainy conditions workers are beginning to struggle with.

Thursday’s weather conditions caused crews to pick up about 10,000 fewer pieces of debris than normal.

But they say they’re still on track to meet their 90-day cleanup goal to get 100% federal reimbursement.

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