Last call for storm debris!

Breaux Bridge — The city will be picking up branches at curbside all next week in a last-ditch effort to get rid of storm debris from what one official called “two bad Thursdays” last month.

Maintenance personnel manager Randy “Crip” Cormier told the City Council Tuesday the state has agreed to fund one more sweep of the city to pick up debris just now making its way to the curb from squalls that blew through the area on May 15 and again on May 22.

After that it might be two more weeks before the city’s contract waste hauler is back in town with a boom truck to handle large yard wastes, Cormier said.

It cost the city $150 an hour for the specialized pickup, said Mayor Jack Dale Delhomme.

That cost through June 20 is being picked up by the state under an emergency provision granted when a tornadoes raked Breaux Bridge on May 15.

“We went through the city three times picking up branches,” Cormier said. “This will be the fourth.”

Meanwhile, some residents are still struggling with the automated trash pickup service instituted in April, councilmen said.

Allied Waste, which uses a space shuttle-like grasping arm to pick up and empty trash carts, will not pick up carts that are overloaded because garbage will wind up all over the street.

“If people need an extra cart, they can get an extra cart,” said the mayor.

Each pickup location, household or business, has receive a serial-numbered 96-gallon garbage cart. Extra carts are available at the contractor’s cost of $65.

The carts are being emptied once a week instead of twice as was done the old-fashioned way, with garbage men hanging off the truck.

When good garbage men became few and far between — a nationwide problem, according to Allied Waste representatives — waste haulers were forced into automating their fleets.

Under the renegotiated contract, the monthly fee for the new service remains the same at $18.30 for the rest of the year, subject to a possible adjustment due to staggering fuel costs.

A rate hike in January 2009 will be tied to a producer’s cost index published by the U.S. Department of Labor.