Hurricane Helene uprooted and fell thousands of trees and limbs as it snaked its way north over the Augusta area on Sept. 27. Many of those trees and limbs downed power lines, pierced homes and flattened vehicles. Seemingly nothing was left untouched by the storm’s fury.
Now underway is the arduous process of getting rid of that debris.
“I think Richmond and Columbia (counties) are probably the two largest operations that we have,” said Bo Ansley, regional client services manager at Ceres Environmental. “We estimate that each county probably has upwards of a half a million cubic yards of tree and limb debris.”
Ceres Environmental is a sustainable Florida-based disaster debris removal company contracted by area governments to help out following large-scale natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes.
But what is there to do with so much debris? Where will it all go?
“We don’t ever want to overburden the landfills,” Ansley said. “Landfills are precious infrastructure, built to take on normal household garbage we produce.
“When you have a large disaster that causes millions of cubic yards of debris, what we try to do is to recycle, repurpose or reduce that debris so it’s more manageable.”
Columbia County Procurement Manager Glenn O’Steen noted in an email that Ceres previously provided removal of debris generated in the 2014 ice storm.
Ansley said “about 98% of the hurricane-generated debris in the state of Georgia is vegetative.” Such debris is easy to reduce and repurpose because it’s a renewable resource.
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“We’ll send trucks out in Augusta to pick up large tree parts off the side of the road,” said Ansley. “The tree parts will be taken to a reduction site. There are multiple reduction sites set up strategically in the community to accept this type of debris. Once we get it to the site, we’ll bring in a large grinder to grind it into mulch.”
Ansley said due to the large quantity of tree debris getting turned into mulch, offering it to the public isn’t an option.
“A lot of communities take Christmas trees, mulch them and compost them and turn them back around to the community,” he said. “That’s fine if it’s a manageable amount of debris. When you get catastrophic volumes like what we have now, that byproduct is no longer beneficial. There’s just too much of it. And it’s not the right quality of wood to put in your plant beds.”
Large piles of debris much can even become a “liability”, said Ansley. “This mulch as it decays, it will create heat and cause it to internally combust. … That’s why it has to be managed effectively.”
But the mulched debris can still serve some area growers, said Ansley.
“In the region where we’re working right now, the area consists of sandy soil,” he said. “So we’ve got multiple sources in the agricultural community that are asking for the mulch so they can use it as an amendment to their sandy soil and add some organic compost back to it.”
Ansley said as a last resort the tree debris can go to the landfill.
This reporting content is supported by a partnership with several funders and Journalism Funding Funding Partners.
Erica Van Buren is the climate change reporter for The Augusta Chronicle, part of the USA TODAY Network. Connect with her at EVanBuren@gannett.com or on X: @EricaVanBuren32.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Florida company cleaning up tree debris from Helene in Augusta area