PHOTOS: After six weeks of brush and tree debris laying on the side of Lakewood’s roads following Hurricane Sandy, outside help is finally on the way.
About a dozen trucks and workers from Truenath Emergency Management – a FEMA-contracted company out of Forked River – arrived in Lakewood today to begin clearing the streets of the brush, tree limbs and tree stumps which have been causing a driving nuisance since the Hurricane.
Field manager James Holder tells TLS they anticipated only about five trucks to be made available for Lakewood, and were hoping to have the work completed by the end of the month.
However, close to a dozen trucks were delivered, which Holder says should be able to cut the job time in about half, to about 7-10 days.
All off Lakewood’s roads – including Municipal, County and State roads, will be cleaned withhin 10 feet of the right of way. They will not remove brush from private property.
The trucks, says Holder, will collect the debris, crush it, and then take it to a dumping site. TLS-464/TLS-CCP.
I am really happy to see these guys come in to town, but last article about this topic, the DPW rep was giving some excuse about being busy with leaves (which I still see all over Lakewood).
It would have been appropriate to say we are waiting for outside assistance instead of giving excuses. We are a small city here and we should not have to cut thru the red tape like big cities. A little transparency will go along way and will probably reduce the amount of complaints around here.
Nothing will reduce the amount of complaints in this town.
I guess this will help to ‘lower’ our taxes as DPW never cleaned up the leaves that FEMA will now clean up.. So happy….
unless they start taxin complaining….. then complaints should plummet…
the DPW head wasnt planning on taking outside conractors at the time…
i saw these guys in ocean county park any where else in town on their list or only the park???
I get it that we had a monster storm followed by another storm right afterward. But I think in the 6 weeks since then things could have been cleaned up a little more then what they have been. Last week we finally got the limbs cleaned up in less then 1 hour, but leaves are still curbside so that when it rains our street starts to flood (and yes we keep the sewer grates clear). In 6 weeks the trees and limbs should have been all picked up and DPW should have been starting leaf collection.
Haven’t had tree branches or leaves picked up on Central Ave. yet. I don’t get it. Everywhere I drive there are so many piles of branches and leaves but I have yet to see even one truck picking anything up. What a mess.
I gound out from a reliable source the reason it took so long was this way Fema will pick up the costs. All other towns paid out of pocket for this. This approval and wait saved tax payers $1 million dollars.
so which do you want, trash and recycling pick-up daily through out town, or leaves and trees picked up. You think it looks like a mess now, imagine they give up the trash collection to go pick up every leaf and twig and branch and tree. Trash will be flying all over the place, and you will complain about that too. How many people are left working at DPW? How many qualified truck drivers do they have. You can’t have both 100%, something has to give, and it seems to me the natural leaves and trees would be what gives, not the stinky garbage. When we get heavy snow next week the complaints will be: they haven’t plowed my steet yet, they haven’t picked my garbage up from yesterday, they haven’t picked up the leaves because they are covered by snow, they haven’t done this, they haven’t done that. The power is out, the sky is falling. What have you done beside complain?
#8 lets say you are correct the township couldve at least notified the citizens of this good town that they are waiting for the reason you mentioned. Instead all we got was a bunch of hovel about how they r busy with the leaves.
And according to #4 he says they werent going to go the route you mentioned so…….
Leaves and Branches from a storm not picked up for 6 weeks or 26 funerals never picking up that child again! Let us really justify what the important things in life are and not the ones that are just an inconvenience.
#9 So going by what you’re saying the entire DPW is totally incompetent now because in years past not only did they pick up the garbage during the week, they also picked up leaves and branches. Also during each 2 week pickup time they were on my street numerous times. As far as your other comments, have you ever tried to stop a vehicle on wet leaves? If it does snow then the trucks will come along and push the leaf/snow mixture back into our yards and if it freezes it will be stuck there until it thaws. What have I done?…Raked my leaves 4x back to the street, kept the sewer grates clear in front of my house, raked the leaves in the road back to the curb and thanked the guys that came and took the branches away.
#11, you’re comparing apples and oranges. What happened in CT has nothing to do with leaf collection in Lkwd.
#10, I agree. If they were waiting for FEMA money why not let us know on the TOWNSHIP website.
thank you #11
This company can get the job done quickly. They cleaned Toms River in no time. I just wish them the best of luck getting around town with the trucks.