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The Daily Tar Heel

Trash pickup back on track after snowstorms

The recent snowstorms delayed trash pickup for several areas.

Carrboro town officials made the decision Thursday and Friday to delay trash pickup for those two days because of inclement weather conditions.

The trash was scheduled to be picked up on Monday and Tuesday instead.

Trash pickup will resume its normal schedule this week for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

David Andrews, the town manager for Carrboro, said this is the first time there have been any sort of trash pickup delays this year.

“Generally, people understand,” he said.

He said the public works crew has been working diligently to clean up Carrboro’s main roads, including Main Street and Weaver Street.

Andrews said the secondary streets are challenging to get to for clean up — making them a challenge to maneuver.

He said due to the abnormal amount of snow this winter season, it has been more difficult to deposit the trash once it has been picked up because the landfills consist of more snow than land.

“Even if we picked up the trash, we wouldn’t have anywhere to take it,” Andrews said.

Meanwhile, the town of Chapel Hill experienced less challenging snow days.

While some Chapel Hill residents took to social media to voice their concerns over the delay in trash pickup, most residents saw their trash service go unaffected.

The recycling routes on Thursday were delayed until approximately 9 a.m. The town’s public works crews also collected routes they missed on Tuesday on Friday. There was no yard waste collection on Friday.

Any houses that were missed will not be made up.

Wendy Simmons, Chapel Hill solid waste services manager, said in an email that only Thursday routes were delayed from the inclement weather.

“The Public Works Department was able to finish the collection of residential solid waste on Friday,” Simmons said.

Simmons said the only streets that were not attended to were the ones that were blocked by vehicles or had low-hanging power lines.

“These residential customers will be collected on their next scheduled collection day,” she said.

Run-off from the snow resulted in black ice in many areas throughout Chapel Hill and Carrboro overnight, creating treacherous conditions for drivers.

State and local maintenance crews were busy spreading salt on a lot of the town’s main roads and overpasses.

Weaver Dairy Road, N.C. 54, East Franklin Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard were particularly impacted by the freezing conditions, the press release stated.

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Similar to the conditions in Carrboro, Chapel Hill’s secondary streets were the most dangerous because of the inclement weather.

This made trash and recycling pickup in largely residential areas more of a challenge, a town of Chapel Hill press release stated.

As for this coming week, the warmer weather will allow for regular trash pickup schedules in both Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Waste management services resumed pickup yesterday, and will remain on schedule throughout the rest of the week.

“Everything is on track,” Andrews said.

city@dailytarheel.com