How we got here
Montgomery County Commissioners halted all debris pickup operations on Aug. 27 due to a request from CrowderGulf, LLC for an additional $10 million for debris removal. Multiple commissioners expressed concern over the final cost of debris removal, which was estimated at $24 million.
The breakdown
Reid Loper, vice president of CrowderGulf, LLC, went before commissioners on Sept. 3 to present the reasoning behind the large increase in the cost of debris collection and removal following Hurricane Beryl.
“This is a citizen driven event, ultimately you do not know how much debris citizens are going to bring,” said Loper. “Those estimates can become pretty grossly off.”
Jason Millsaps, executive director of the Montgomery County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said since the collections were halted over 1,200 households have requested a final pass of debris pickup from the county.
Millsaps and Loper both said that the majority of the debris removal still needed was in Precinct 3 and Precinct 4, which encompasses much of southern and eastern Montgomery County.
What else?
Precinct 3 Commissioner James Noack requested the county only pickup debris along residential addresses in The Woodlands due to concerns regarding non-storm debris being picked up by the county.
“We are picking that [debris] up. We are chipping that [debris] we're doing all that. It's not something that we're expecting the county to take on any way shape or form,” The Woodlands Township board member Brad Bailey said. “We would be happy to establish a procedure in this situation in which we're maybe doing a different way of picking [debris] up and putting it somewhere else, but in no way are we expecting [the county] to pick up [debris].”
Noack said that while residents may not be putting non-storm related debris out for pickup, his concerns were still with unrelated debris being picked up by the county and lending to the high cost of removal.
In their words
- “The issue is there's no way to distinguish those two [types of debris], and we can't be picking up that debris,” Noack said. “That puts us in trouble with FEMA also.”
- “There's a process in finding and measuring all of that [debris] for validation that has to happen,” said Tracey Phillips, deputy director of recovery for Haggerty Consulting. “Then there would be additional costs for additional monitors, other than the ones that we're providing for CrowderGulf.”
- “We've personally as a township spent over $2 million hiring contractors to come in and help us with this debris cleanup, as everyone knows, it's overwhelming,” Bailey said. “Taking down the trees that are not storm related and putting them on the side [of the road] is not something that we are doing, and we're actually communicating to all of our residents not to do that.”
The outcome
Commissioners voted to approve the new estimated cost of $24 million for debris removal through CrowderGulf, which will allow debris removal operations to resume immediately. Millsaps said moving forward would also allow him to begin the application process for reimbursement through FEMA for the expenses.
“The decision today will allow us to know what number to apply for,” Millsaps said. “We potentially could recoup $9.1 million fairly quickly, within months, which will help lighten the load a little bit; and then we have to prove up that claim to go after the additional cost [of debris removal]”
Given the high cost of the debris removal, Loper said CrowderGulf would work with the county for payment of the services to prevent the county paying the full cost of debris removal at once.
“I can say – give you my guarantee here as an officer of the company of CrowderGulf – that we will not hold Montgomery County to the terms within the contract,” Loper said. “We will extend those on a negotiated basis and we will accept payment incrementally as approved.”
