A Month After Hurricane Irma, Florida Cities Are Still Struggling to Clean Up

Daniel Stermer, the mayor of Weston, a wealthy suburb near Fort Lauderdale, says the wide swath of damage makes it harder for anyone to attract enough workers. The debris haulers often come from out of state, and travel across the country in the wake of disasters. Many of them went to Texas to clean up after Hurricane Harvey a week before Irma pummeled Florida and Georgia. Irma’s huge trail of destruction further spread out the people and equipment that responded.But there’s not much cities can do about it, says Stermer, who is the Broward County League of Cities' point person on debris removal. “What are we going to do? Go to court?” he says. “That’s not going to fix the problem today. Everybody wants it done, and they want it done yesterday.”That said, the Florida attorney general’s office is investigating at least three waste-hauling companies to determine whether they tried to gouge cities by raising their rates after the hurricane hit.Attorney General Pat Bondi sent the companies subpoenas as part of an investigation into allegations that the contractors are not doing work for the rates they negotiated before the storm, are holding off on doing work until they can negotiate higher rates or are responding slowly for their contract work.“Sitting debris is a health and safety hazard and needs to be removed as soon as possible – but instead of doing their jobs and helping Floridians recover, apparently some contractors are delaying the work or requesting higher rates,” Bondi said in a statement.Another big source of frustration for Florida city officials? The high concentration of gated communities. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a long-standing policy that it won’t reimburse cities for the cost of removing debris from private property, including gated communities.That's a problem, says Stermer, the Weston mayor. Most of his city, in fact, is made up of gated communities. The public roads look g... (Governing)