With residents locked down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Evangeline Parish Solid Waste Director Pat Derouselle explained his agency has seen an uptick in the amount of trash collection.
“With the spring cleanup and the pandemic,” he said, “it’s really multiplying than what we normally pick up.”
As Derouselle explained, many residents are using this time to trim limbs around their property.
“We want to make sure when residents call our office for limbs that they are all put in one location in the yard,” Derouselle said. “We need them at the driveway or one designated area because it speeds up the process for when we are grappling them.”
Derouselle added small piles of limbs can be put in bags with the normal garbage to be collected. Leaves also can be bagged with residents’ trash. However, the bags and the other garbage items have to be all together.
“We want to stress it has to be all together,” Derouselle explained. “If you have limbs, make sure you make one pile and make sure they are not under power lines.”
For residents who are trimming trees, Derouselle stated they are encouraged to use a contract servicer because, as he said, “contract servicers bring them to our burn site in Mamou that is an official designated state burn site.” He added, “We don’t charge contract servicers to dump at all at the Mamou site.”
Derouselle also explained Evangeline Parish Solid Waste renewed its contract with AWS for an additional five years. Part of the contract includes the garbage company picking up more small items. But, all the items have to be bagged in order to be collected.
As for the pandemic itself, Derouselle projected a dip in the amount of sales taxes collected for Solid Waste. “It might not be a huge drop,” he said, “but we won’t feel the hit probably until about May.”
He concluded, “As director, I’m trying to provide the service as efficiently as possible to save the tax payers money.
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Tony Marks
Editor