GREENWOOD COUNTY, S.C. (FOX Carolina) – Cleanup continues in places like Greenwood County nearly three months after Hurricane Helene devasted parts of the Upstate.
“For a lot of people this storm is over and done with, but here, the Public Works personnel- we’ll be dealing with this storm for many more months to come,” Robert Russian, director of Public Works for Greenwood County, said.
Since the storm hit on Sept. 27, Russian says the workload has doubled for his team. “Typically we get a truck every four minutes. Right now trucks are coming, on average, a truck every less than 2 minutes.”
The county even created a drop-off site specifically designated for storm debris.
“Debris can’t go into the landfill,” Russian explained during a tour of the site. “That landfill was just not adequate enough to handle the debris.”
“There are several football fields worth of debris down here,” he added, pointing to the new site.
The designated site is around 15 acres and is located on the county’s landfill property. So far, the county estimates they’ve collected around 22,000 tons of debris. That’s about half of what they expect to collect, in total, at the site. Russian explained they even created a new road to get there.
“We spent more than a quarter million dollars building a road just to access, fully access, the debris area that would be able to stand up to the amount of truck traffic we knew we were going to receive,” he said.
Greenwood Co. has spent over a $1 million on this project, and those costs may go up as work continues. Russian added the work doesn’t end for his team when debris gets dumped.
“We don’t have room to just let it sit on the ground, and we don’t have enough room in our class 2 landfill to bury it all.”
That’s why 75-80% of debris goes through a chipper, which is then sent to a local company to be used as boiler fuel.
Russian asks neighbors to remember the Public Works employees who are still hard at work.
“It takes a lot to be asked, ‘Hey you’re doing this much today. Tomorrow I want you to do double, and I want you to continue doing double for 8 months.’ They’re doing all the heavy lifting right now.
Once cleanup is complete, Russian said it will take an additional 6 months to finish the grinding process.
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