Debris clean-up in Charlotte County to be completed in March 2023

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — Approximately 2.5 million cubic feet of debris were left behind during Hurricane Ian, according to John Elias, the Director of Public Works in Charlotte County. He made this statement on Tuesday.

“The contractor in discussions with us thinks they will be done with this project “substantially complete” is the term they used by March,” said Elias.

Edward Rensch, who has called Port Charlotte home for the last two years, believes that the county has to speed up its operations.

“That’s too long, that is absolutely too long,” said Rensch.

According to Elias, teams are collecting around 1,000 loads of debris per day, and they have already collected more than 600,000 cubic yards of trash.

Rensch said on Tuesday that he finds it difficult to accept such statistics given that he has not seen anybody clearing up the trash on his street.

“I haven’t seen anyone cleaning up anything yet. Maybe I am going to the wrong places but I haven’t seen anybody cleaning anything I just see more and more debris coming in,” said Rensch.

Rensch thinks that the trash piles that are getting bigger and bigger on his street could lead to another problem in the future.

“The deeper concern is somebody driving the street and flicking a cigarette butt out and flying into the pile and it would take nothing just a spark to ignite this stuff and it is so dry and flammable it’s ready to go up right now,” said Rensch.

Elias said on Tuesday that Charlotte County could bring in more debris trucks by hiring two more contractor businesses.

As a result, Elias said that the personnel are now doing what he described as “a bang-up job,” and that, as a result, they are not bringing in any further trucks at this time.