HOUSTON – It’s been more than nine months since Hurricane Beryl left Houston’s street lined with debris for weeks, even months.
For most of us, those vivid memories are just that—memories.
However, along Lone Rock Drive in Kingwood, there’s still a pile of debris that’s waiting to be picked up.
“I feel like they don’t care, to be honest with you,” said Amy Gibson.
She’s spent the better half of the last nine months trying and trying again to get to the City of Houston to come out and pickup the debris sitting outside of her home.
Gage Goulding: “You know, Beryl was last July?”
Amy Gibson: “Of course.”
Gage Goulding: “We’re coming up on a year and this is still sitting here.”
Amy Gibson: “We’re coming up on a year, and this is still sitting here.”
Gage Goulding: “When you say they refuse to pick it up, what do you mean?”
Amy Gibson: “I have called many times, and they say, ‘We’ll send somebody out.’ And then I get an email saying that the case has been closed.”
Amy has three different 311 cases with the City of Houston. Those are just the ones she started writing down after Amy says she started getting the runaround.
She’d open a case, and it would be mysteriously closed, but the debris remained in her front yard.
“I have to re-call. And they’re like, you know, we’ll escalate it, we will escalate, it gets closed. And I just, the most recent one, they told me they, I am out of their service area,” she said.
It’s the same thing a Solid Waste representative told KPRC 2’s Gage Goulding when he drove up to Amy’s home on Monday, conveniently a couple hours after KPRC 2 started asking questions.
Solid Waste Rep: “That’s not in the city’s service area.”
Gage Goulding: “What does that mean?”
Solid Waste Rep: " We only service a certain area of Kingwood."
Wait a minute. A quick search of Amy’s address shows that it’s clearly within the City of Houston limits.
So, what’s the hold up?
It *could* be that her landlord had to wait to put the debris out until after insurance finished their work. The debris is really just pieces of their fence and chunks of the tree that destroyed said fence.
“When we had the freeze, some guys came over asking if they could take some wood for firewood to put in the fireplace,” Gibson said. “It’s an eyesore for the entire street. I mean, you look up and down the street, you have these beautiful homes. You pass by mine, it was like, wow, you know, they’re trashy.”
Houston’s 311 department has a total of five calls out at Amy’s address, but they also say they’re just the messenger.
It’s the Solid Waste department who’s ultimately responsible.
“We take full responsibility. During the storm, there was oversight regarding Solid Waste service tickets. With new leadership now in place, we are committed to preventing such issues from happening again,” said Larius Hassen, SWMD interim director in an email statement on Wednesday.
The debris was ultimately picked up by the Houston Police Department’s Differential Response Team.
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