Florida’s Waste Professionals Share Update on Front Line Conditions Post-Helene and Milton

Many of Florida’s waste workers are still plugging away helping to dig the communities they serve out of the wreckage left by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Read on for updates from the front line, shared through the lenses of a few municipalities and private companies.

Jonathan Kane, Tampa City’s audit and contracts supervisor, gives the perspective of a municipality pushing through the back-to-back hurricanes and their aftermath.

With Milton’s anticipated touchdown pending, city workers moved fast to clean up the tonnage of debris from Helene’s surge. They were dealing with masses of spewed broken glass, rocks, torn tree and shrub parts that the next wind blast threatened to send flying.

Tampa’s two primary contractors had minimal crews to assist ahead of this next storm; subcontractors were in scarce supply. Days before Milton slammed into the Gulf Coast, hundreds of Tampa City employees came in to support storm debris collections, along with shipments of other resources. The ramped-up efforts continued until Milton made landfall.

Nearly a month later, Kane, like many of his colleagues, works stretched-out days and evenings. His time is spent in ongoing dialogues with internal and external personnel regarding storm debris collections, while many city workers take on roles outside of their daily duties to support varied recovery endeavors.

The volumes of household debris left behind were unprecedented.

“To put it into perspective, the city collected 20 cubic yards from Hurricane Ian in 2022; that’s less than the capacity of one lightning loader. [After Helene], sometimes it took multiple trucks to pick up just one household’s mixed debris. And Milton left more vegetative debris than anything we have seen from previous storms,” Kane says.

The city had five preauthorized sites to receive materials well ahead of the hurricances, but had to open a shuttered school and former Tampa Police impound lot, among additional locations, to handle the onslaught.

Ahead of each hurricane, waste and recycling company FCC Environmental, who services Florida’s West Coast, pulled its trucks from the streets and surrounded its buildings with trucks to protect them from high winds. Operators shut down and secured the CNG fueling compound to safeguard it from lightning strikes, and they checked off all the other items on a laundry list of pre-storm precautionary measures.

Then came the work to clean up the tonnage of storm debris while continuing the routine charge of dealing with residential streams. All total, collections have doubled, with cleanup crews still on overdrive in the hardest hit areas.

Landfills most affected by the storms are struggling to stay on top of both haulers’ increased loads and trailers of storm debris dropped off by residents. Weight times are a good two hours.

FCC has gotten innovative to adapt to what’s become a new normal for now.

“We are starting routes earlier; extending the workday; and working on Sundays. We are also reallocating resources within our network to support the areas that were impacted the most,” says Luly Escar, vice president of public & governmental affairs, FCC.

As of now, a typical Monday yard waste route can take up to three days to complete.  But haulers and support staff are making some headway in the storm’s aftermath. Still, Escar envisions a long road ahead on the way back to business as usual.  

“Communities impacted by such large storms back-to-back will not recover within just a couple of weeks. Post-storm recovery can take months to return to normal,” she says.

Despite the hurricanes’ blow to Florida’s West Coast, Waste Pro’s division in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties kept going at an impressive clip. About 75 percent of the trash and recycling company’s garbage trucks were back on the road one to two days after each storm hit, and as many recycling routes were running by the next service day.

Today, all trucks are on schedule, though the hardest hit municipalities postponed residential recycling until October 16 (a week after Milton blew in) because their residents had been solely focused on getting back on their feet.

Pickup frequency is the same as pre-hurricane; but the volumes of curbside waste have more than doubled between trash, bulk material, and yard waste, says Daric Huntt, Waste Pro division manager, Clearwater, Florida.

“The roads have been cleared for the most part, and we are able to get to a majority of the areas we service. But there are a lot of dump trucks loading material throughout the communities using Bobcats and dozers. So, there are times where we have to be patient and allow for these workers to complete what they are doing before we can pass them,” Huntt says.

Adding to the holdups, haulers are seeing two-plus-hour delays to dump material due to long waiting lines.

Fortunately, Palm Beach Solid Waste Authority’s (SWA) story is not as intense as that of its industry peers on Florida’s west side. Both Helene and Milton were losing momentum by the time they reached this southeastern region. 

“Our preparations were the same as for other storms. Watch the forecast; review models; and take action should projected impacts be forecast to cause waste collection disruptions,” says Patrick Carroll, managing director of operations, Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County.

The facilities were back up and running almost immediately after the storms passed and tropical force storm winds had subsided.

Though Milton did bring on fierce tornadoes that took their toll on Palm Beach communities. SWA has been working to clear the destruction those twisters left behind – an estimated 350,000 yards of tree trunks and root balls, and more construction debris than in previous storms.  

Field service coordinators who typically oversee traditional waste hauling are working extra hours overseeing storm debris collections. Debris management operations are running 12 hours a day.  

While there’s more work to do, access to most roads is now open throughout the area.

 “SWA operations are back to normal for most of the county. And we anticipate all debris to be collected in just under 90 days,” Carroll says.

Palm Beach and its closest neighbors are lucky overall.

While their waste management counterparts on Florida’s West Coast have endured more, many of them say they see signs of light at the end of the tunnel. But reaching the destination will take time.