Although an Opinion piece by Barbara West of Hemingway makes some good points about the extra cost of dumping the huge amount of waste caused by Irma, the disclosure by the Village District Office seems to indicate that the problem is not the additional waste, but the fact that Crowder Gulf’s sub-contractors have not honored their contracts and have headed south where the money is better.
It is hard NOT to suspect that The Villages’ decision to use a FEMA hauler exclusively was motivated by money as well. Instead of using CH2MHill for “normal” pickup of bagged trash in the few days after the storm, and direct FEMA haulers to pick up non-residential and un-bagged trash, they chose to dismiss CH2MHill and rely solely on FEMA paid haulers for ALL pick-ups. It seems to me that it is THIS decision which has caused the delay and dissatisfaction among residents.
If CH2MHill had been allowed to make their normal pickup, much of the residential trash would have been removed in the few days after the storm and residents would not be sitting with collapsing bags of rotting waste on their lawns and driveways, made soggy by rainy days in the weeks since the storm. They would also not risk being exposed to gouging of their lawns and driveways by the mechanical means mandated by FEMA for their contractors, which damage FEMA has specifically stated that they will NOT be liable for.
I get a little tired of the developer’s family continually taking actions that would benefit their already full $2 billion pocketbooks at the expense of residents who have to endure the daily view and stench of rotting piles of vegetation on their lawns and the risk of damages inflicted by the mechanical means used by FEMA to collect them. It appears that instead of re-introducing CH2MHill into the pickup process for ALL the Villages and pay in full for their mistaken decision, District Management is still trying to coax FEMA back to do a job they have reneged on to start with.
Don Hess is a resident of the Village of Santo Domingo.
