Clean up continues in Columbus

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- Cleaning up can be a messy business, and as you drive through the city of Columbus, you can see the reminders of Saturday’s storm piling up.

“We won’t stop until we get this city where it needs to be,” said Public Works Director Casey Bush.

Public works crews are back in full force after a brief slow down to allow Columbus Light and Water to restore power.

Now they are working non-stop to get debris loaded up and moved out.

“My guys are back at it strong they are out there even for this weekend we’re going to be working 11 hours we’re gonna work from 6 to 5 this whole weekend trying to get the stuff picked up,” said Bush.

Right now all of that debris is going to one place — the landfill.

But the sudden overload may force a change of plans.

“We got a plan put together. Right now our landfill is at almost capacity for the city, and we don’t want to exceed or get to a point that we can’t use our landfill for our city and our citizens here, so we are planning on trying to take some of that rubbish to our West Point site,” said Bush.

Landfill supervisor Roger Lewis said they are working to keep everything organized.

They have three separate piles set up: city and county trash, debris and limbs, and metal.

“Our metals we recycle. We take those out somewhere else, and everything has to go into different places, according to MDEQ regulations. So if it’s not in the proper place we can get fined for it and also to protect the wildlife and everything we got to make sure we have everything permitted in this footprint so we can dump and degrade into the ground properly,” said Lewis

As the cleanup process moves forward Lewis expects to see more residential material coming in..

“If you bring in your own personal debris make sure it’s just debris, not your household trash what I say I mean limbs as far as vegetation wood, concrete, shingles, anything. Any of your household trash that we go somewhere else and we wouldn’t be able take that here and make sure you put it on a truck and bring it in on the trailer and have it don’t have to be sorted or anything but be able to separate your metal from your debris,” said Lewis.

If you are planning on taking a load to the landfill, you need to keep an eye on the weather.

Lewis says the roads are not gravel and can be very muddy.