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Even with several weeks of cleanup done, crews still have plenty left to do.
“It’s going to take a long time,” said Scott Schimelfenig, Thurston County utility operations manager. “It was snow first, and then they had the ice that came in on top of that and all of a sudden everything started breaking.”
What’s left of fallen trees and broken branches lies to the sides of roads throughout the county and in the cities, making riding treacherous for bicyclists.
“The shoulders have been pretty sketchy,” said Michelle Kautzmann, a bike commuter and the owner of Joyride Bikes in Lacey. “There are sticks that stick out into the shoulder that can tag you really good.”
Kautzmann recently was riding down the shoulder of U.S. Highway 101 and inadvertently rode over a tree limb that caught her bike’s front wheel.
“That sent me flying,” Kautzmann said.
Many bikers are pushed into the lane of traffic instead of the bike lane to avoid trees, which Capital Bicycling Club of Olympia road ride captain Sue Duffy said can get dangerous, too.
“Cars don’t understand that bikes have to veer out of the way for that,” Duffy said. “A lot of drivers are great, but there are always those that just don’t get it, and resent the fact you might have to go beyond the bike lane.”
TONS OF DEBRIS
Residents were asked to collect any debris that fell into their yards and bring it to drop-off locations.
The county has collected 5,000 or 6,000 tons of debris and expects to get up to 12,000 tons by the end of the month, Schimelfenig said.
Some of the collected debris will be chipped and used in the county parks and trail systems. The rest likely will go to a paper mill.
Schimelfenig said that if it were a different time of year, the county could have made money from debris going to the paper mill. Instead, it could make as little as $50 per load.
“It’s not much, but at least they take it away,” Schimelfenig said.
The cost to the county to dispose of the debris is expected to be around $250,000, Schimelfenig said, an amount available in the county’s reserve fund.
That does not include costs of picking up debris.
County interim road operations manager Jack Lane said the county won’t know collection costs until next week. For now, his biggest concern is getting as much debris cleaned up as possible before other seasonal projects start.
“We have our summer programs, and there is money dedicated to that,” Lane said. “We will do a big push in March and see how far we can get into April.
“It will probably be September, October before we can make sure the roads are cleaned up.”
The biggest damage reported throughout the county has been guard rails hit by trees, but there has been no major road damage other than pot holes.
Lane said the damaged guardrails could cost the county “a couple hundred thousand dollars.”
TEAMING UP
In Tumwater, city crews have collected about 1,000 cubic yards of debris, which will be hauled to the county landfill for disposal.
When the storm hit, they took an all-hands-on-deck approach to clearing roads.
“We are borrowing people from the utility side, water department, sewer and storm department to come and help the street guys clean up,” said Marc LaVack, operations supervisor in Tumwater.
Two crews of about 10 people each have split the city into three sections for cleanup. One of those sections northwest of the city hasn’t even been touched by work crews.
“I can see easily another month’s worth of work, maybe even a little bit more,” LaVack said. “We are trying to make our first pass through the city, which was to just clean up the right-of-way.”
Tumwater residents were asked to have any debris that fell into their yard collected by Monday. At that time, the city is expected to come through and pick up the debris.
“That should be our final time through the city,” LaVack said. “It’s going to be a long process, and hopefully people will be patient with us. We have a plan of attack, it’s just going to take some time to get through there.”
Lacey and Olympia residents are responsible for their own debris removal.
Scott Egger, public works director in Lacey, said the city has made “good headway” clearing right-of-ways of debris and hopes to have the majority of the cleanup finished within a month.
“There was a lot of damage to trees in our parks,” Egger said. “Full cleanup will be several months.”
Olympia cleanup crews hope to be finished by the end of the month, with most of the arterial streets done.
Chelsea Krotzer: 360-754-5476
ckrotzer@theolympian.com
@chelseakrotzer
