From your driving route to cracks in the pavement, lingering effects from Monday's blizzard are still hanging around parts of Amarillo. As the City of Amarillo works to clean up the town, post- blizzard, it's also playing catch up on trash pickup. Even after two days of being back in service, there are still dumpster's yet to be emptied.
"There's still a couple alleys up there that are still snow packed that we're going to have to have some special effort to get to those containers," said Michael Rice, Director of Public Works for the City of Amarillo.
The City of Amarillo trash collecting trucks couldn't get out at all Monday or Tuesday and when they finally went back out Wednesday, they started on the north side of town.
"So if you were picked up like on Wednesday of last week," Rice added, "then you didn't get serviced again until yesterday or today."
Most neighborhoods in south Amarillo haven't been serviced at all this week whereas normally their trash is dumped every third business day and some dumpster's are starting to spill over. City officials hope switching collecting cycles now instead of later will help them catch up on pick up.
"We're transitioning from our winter cycle to our summer cycle which means we go from once every third business day to twice a week," Rice said. "So, our goal is to go ahead and get those automated dumpsters serviced at least once, either yesterday, today, tomorrow or Saturday if necessary."
Focusing on south Amarillo tomorrow and Saturday, and getting all of us back on a less smelly, summertime schedule by Monday.
Fortunately, catching up on trash collection doesn't cost the City any extra money, only extra effort, as several of its trucks got stuck in snowy alleys and had to have assistance getting pulled out.
