Arkansas Online

Florida deals with storm debris

Millions of cubic yards inundate landfills in costly cleanup

ANNA PHILLIPS

Nearly two months after Hurricane Ian slammed into the southwest Florida coast, destroying thousands of homes and taking more than 100 lives, state and local governments are wrestling with what to do with a staggering amount of storm debris.

In the past seven weeks, state officials estimate crews have removed about 20.4 million cubic yards of debris and millions more remain.

Statewide, Hurricane Ian is estimated to have left behind nearly 31 million cubic yards of disaster debris, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which obtained the figure from the Army Corps of Engineers.

Cleanup efforts in the coastal cities and counties hardest hit by the Category 4 storm will likely take months and cost billions of dollars.

“With hundreds of people moving to Florida every day and coastal development off the charts, the combination of that and more intense hurricanes results in this massive problem,” said Jon Paul Brooker, Ocean Conservancy’s director of Florida conservation.

The already enormous task has only become more daunting after Hurricane Nicole hit Florida’s east coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Nov. 10. State officials said they did not yet have an estimate of the hurricane’s damage.

Research shows that the debris, toxic chemicals and bacteria spread by disasters like hurricanes, floods and fires are exposing people to physical harm.

In Florida, government officials are hiring contractors to pick up the refuse — at a cost largely reimbursed by FEMA — and take it to temporary debris management sites. From there, some of the storm debris will be taken to municipal dumps and some will be trucked across the state to privately run landfills.

Florida poses particular challenges because of its shallow water table and potential for makeshift landfills to leach contaminants into groundwater.

That’s one reason local officials are likely to face questions about the environmental and public health effects of their decisions.

In Lee County, where Ian came ashore and left a path of destruction in its wake, local officials have decided to reopen a landfill to quickly get rid of storm debris.

The Gulf Coast Landfill closed 15 years ago at the urging of nearby residents, who had purchased their homes on the promise that the landfill would close and stay closed. Now the county’s plan is to allow the landfill to stay open, temporarily, as a disaster debris site.

Residents are concerned about the landfill’s rebirth, as is at least one county commissioner, Cecil Pendergrass, who told a local CBS affiliate he fears the effects on air quality and potential water contamination.

“There will be runoff from that exposure,” he said.

Even where local sites are available, some officials are apprehensive about filling up their landfills with storm debris.

John Elias, the public works director for Charlotte County, estimated that Hurricane Ian left behind 2.5 million cubic yards of debris in the county alone.

“We have a landfill we’re trying to maximize the life of,” Elias said. “And we don’t have that much space in our county to create a new one.”

Growing landfills pose well-documented hazards, such as the generation of methane, a more potent, though shorter-lived, greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But piling on storm debris can cause additional problems.

After damaged drywall from flooded homes reaches landfills, Timothy Townsend, a University of Florida professor of environmental engineering, said the wet gypsum mixes with bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide gas. In addition to smelling like rotten eggs, the toxic gas can trigger headaches and nausea and cause health problems for people with asthma.

Many of the largest landfills capture this and other noxious gases in collection systems. A spokesperson for Waste Management, which operates the Gulf Coast Landfill, said it has such a system in place.

Some of the hardest areas to clean up are not on land but along the region’s coastal areas and just offshore, according to local officials and environmental advocates.

“There’s a lot of debris we know is in the water that we can’t see,” said Jason Rolfe, a coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program.

In Southwest Florida, Brooker said Ocean Conservancy plans to hire local fishing guides this winter to collect debris in mangroves, swamps and other hard-toreach areas.

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2022-11-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.arkansasonline.com/article/281565179771921

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