Austin debris clean-up efforts to continue through end of April, city officials say

AUSTIN, Texas - So far, more than 100,000 tons of debris has been collected from February's ice storm.

"We're super happy to see the crews coming in and cleaning it up and taking care of it for us," said Lacey Walton, a Southwest Austin Resident.

Cleanup has been a long time coming for residents of a Southwest Austin neighborhood, who have been waiting patiently for crews to come out to pick up the storm debris.

"Pretty much since like a day or two after the ice melted. We've had massive like the four or five foot piles of debris, and it literally filled our whole streets," said Walton.

There are 70 crews working to collect large branches and tree limbs from Austin Resource Recovery customers. 

Once collected, storm debris collected is brought to one of three temporary, designated park locations where the debris is turned into mulch.

"[We have] collected about 100,000 tons of material. For reference, 100,000 tons of material would equate to about 65,000 dump truck loads," said Ken Snipes, Director of Austin Resource Recovery.

The three park locations are Circle C Ranch Metro Park, Bolm District Park, and Old Manor Road.

Once the debris is turned to mulch, it is loaded into a tractor trailer and hauled off to Austin Water.

"[It is] then transferred to Austin Waters’ Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant, and it's used to make Dillo Dirt from there," said Amy Slagle, Division Manager, Austin Resource Recovery.

Austin is not the only city doing this, the City of Round Rock is also using a similar method.

Recently, the Round Rock Fire Department responded to a fire at one of the city’s temporary brush drop off locations near East Palm Valley. Officials say an excavator and a mulcher caught on fire. Crews were able to put it out.

In Austin, officials assure they are working to avoid a situation like that from happening at any of their sites.

"The way that we mitigate the fire risk here is just by keeping the process moving, so this material is not here very long," said Snipes.

For pickup, crews are using 311 service requests to determine which neighborhoods are ready for collection and should be prioritized first. There have been 39,000 311 requests made.

"The most heavily impacted areas have been Northwest Austin, West Austin, and Southwest Austin. Circle C had an incredible amount of damage as well, so that's primarily where most of the calls came from," said Slagle.

Cleanup is expected to go until the end of April.