Waste Management has agreed to collect flood damaged items in Macomb for the next two weeks.
Dave Schaab, Municipal Marketing Manager, told aldermen that items left at the curb should be placed in a container and weigh no more than 50 pounds. He said an exception will be made for water damaged furniture.
“If you can get it to the curb, the bulky items don’t have to be knocked down to a container size or bag,” Schaab said. “That’s fine, we’ll accept that as well.”
Schaab said water damaged carpeting should be rolls of two feet or less and weigh no more than 50 pounds.
Flood damaged electronics will not be accepted during the special pickup. Those should be taken to the e-waste recycling center at 510 N Pearl St.
Before the city council made the agreement Monday, Niall Hartnett still had pile of water damaged items in his back yard.
He and his wife live with their twenty month old at the corner of Wigwam Hollow and Jana roads.
Hartnett said his basement had three feet of water and a half inch of mud on the floor. He had finished scraping the mud out of the floor and sanitizing the walls with hospital grade cleanser.
He was still unsure of what he would do with the stack of furniture and other items behind his house.
"This large pile that's dirty is some how going to get to a trash heap, we're trying to figure that out right now," Hartnett said.
Schaab said Waste Management knows how much garbage is collected, on average, during the final two weeks of April in Macomb. For the next two weeks, Waste Management will cover the cost for the first 10% above the average. The city will pay the cost for anything beyond that.
Mayor Mike Inman said it’s possible 100 or more homes were damaged last week during what he called a “historic rainfall event.”
