APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – Crews hit the streets of Outagamie County Thursday to begin cleaning up residential properties and highways littered with garbage by this week’s intense winds.
County Executive Tom Nelson says four groups were sent out to collect the waste from the county’s landfill that was blown into the Little Chute neighborhood to its east.
From late Monday to Wednesday night, winds gusts hovered around 50 miles per hour in Outagamie County and much of Northeast Wisconsin.
Nelson says the winds were so intense that the decision was made to shut down the landfill at 11 am Wednesday; something he notes has not happened in recent memory, or possibly ever.
By the time it reopened Thursday morning, Nelson says roughly five hours of work time was lost.
However, he believes it would have cost more to keep the facility open during the period of intense winds as they were losing as much garbage as they were taking in, thus adding to cleanup costs.
Nelson hopes the community can learn something from this week’s winds by being more considerate of one of the items most commonly scattered along Outagamie County highways: plastic bags.
While the county does not colect plastic grocery bags in its curbside recycling pickup, Nelson says many stores that offer those bags to shoppers also take them back.
Nelson encourages people to start recycling those bags to keep them from entering the landfill.
