LITTLE CHUTE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Last week’s wind storm continues to impact the area.
Clean-up is still going after trash was blown around from the Outagamie County landfill.
While the high winds have died down, in Little Chute you can still see the remnants of what had blown over from the Outagamie County Landfill.
Mike Kangas tells WLUK….. “It was a nightmare, it was really a mess.”
Kangas says all these days later, he’s still dealing with the headache… with plastic bags still in his trees.
“It’s pretty sad, there’s like two bags there… I don’t know whats going on over there”
Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson says… “This really was an exceptional situation.”
Nelson says the high sustained winds caused the landfill to be shut down.
The clean-up started right away, and is still going on.
“We’re almost there, were not quite yet there yet though. Certainly that was a lot to clean up.”
Thursday, county crews cherry-picked plastic bags out of the trees around the landfill.
Nelson says they’ve also been working to get rid of the bags remaining in the surrounding neighborhoods.
“We’re hoping that everything can be finished up this week”
As for the future, Nelson says if winds ever do get that bad again, there are protocols for temporarily shutting down the landfill.
But he says there are also other things that can be done ahead of time.
“What we can do now is we can promote recycling those plastic bags”
Kangas says he hopes it doesn’t happen again, but for now, is anxious for his home to be trash-free.
“It’s terrible. I’ve been picking up stuff for a couple days”
The clean-up has no additional cost to taxpayers. Nelson says the costs were already part of the county’s budget.
