An awful stench has been wafting through the homes of Golden Glade Estates, just west of Hobby Airport and south of Sims Bayou. There’s also been backyard flooding after every rain, a constant din from trucks, and generator-powered lighting beaming into local Living Rooms during the night. The cause? Huge piles of wood debris, brought into the southeast Houston neighborhood after Hurricane Ike:
Their problems started when Federal Emergency Management Agency contractors began trucking in hundreds of semi truckloads of pungent smelling, steaming mulch. Local 2 Investigates cameras and Sky 2 helicopter footage show some mounds stacked taller than nearby homes, covering acres of land less than 100 yards from some homes.
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A FEMA official told Local 2 Investigates that FEMA had nothing to do with choosing the site for the temporary storage of mulch from Hurricane Ike. Debris removal crews under contract from FEMA are chopping up storm debris from a central dumping site and then trucking it to more than a dozen storage lots until a use can be found for the mulch. The contractor is leasing the land from the property’s owner.
- Mountains Of Hurricane Mulch Invade Houston Neighborhood [Click2Houston, via BlogHouston]
- Got Mulch? [Swamplot]
Photo of mulch mounds off 288, south of 610: Kyle Mills
I wonder how bad the complaining would be if we left the debris on the streets instead of “mountains of mulch”
Mulch stinks. Bottom line, it just has an awfully pungent smell. It’s not a question of whether it needs to be rounded up and put in one spot, it’s a question of being sensitive to where it is located. I walk past a newly mulched garden and get an instant wheeze. If I had to stay in the area with that smell, I would have full blown and most unpleasant asthma attacks. It is not one or the other, this area or on the streets. We can certainly be more thoughtful than that.