PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — If you ask Chris Nemethy how busy he’s been hauling debris after back-to-back hurricanes, he’ll put it plainly. “Busier than my wife would like me to be,” he said. “I’m running between 10 and 14 hours a day, seven days a week.”
He explained how it’s been a bit of a struggle for private haulers like himself in Pinellas County trying to help homeowners and figure out where to take debris.
“From the very get go, we’ve been facing one struggle after another,” said Nemethy. “We thought that we’d made some headway and had a solution, and as of Monday, we’re back at square one.”
The main Pinellas County dump site—the County’s Solid Waste Disposal Complex in St. Pete—is no longer open to commercial haulers and private citizens for storm debris drop off. That change began earlier this week on Monday.
Related: 'That's never happened': Pinellas County closes main dump to storm debris as trash piles up
The County said the storm debris drop off site at that location was opened, operated, and closed by the Florida Department of Emergency Management.
The site will continue to be run by the state and accept state debris haulers.
“The way that they configure a site to accept a big debris truck with a crane to drop off hundreds of pounds of debris at a time is very different than the way they need to configure it if someone is unloading their pickup truck with the stuff from their backyard,” said David Connor, a Pinellas County Public Information Officer. “It’s just not safe to have those two different kinds of activity happening in the same place.”
Connor said they estimate that there was about a million cubic yards of storm debris generated just in the unincorporated area, saying they’ve been working almost around the clock, and they've managed to pick up about 170,000 cubic yards of that.
“We do have a ways to go. We’re working on it,” said Connor. “We see the appreciation in folks faces when we pick the debris up outside of their house, and we’re asking for patience from the rest of residents.”
Still, it’s meant frustration for some haulers, hoping to help return the community back to normal.
“Let’s get it out of the people’s front yards so that they can have contractors come in, they can rebuild, and we can move forward,” said Nemethy.
The County shared its debris collection and drop-off information online here.