Letter: Not all the debris belongs there

Hilton Head Island Town Manager Steve Riley is quoted in a Dec. 2 story as speculating that the cleanup of our island could take “two or more years.” Scott Liggett, the town’s director of public projects and facilities, is also quoted as speculating that the cleanup will take longer than the FEMA deadline of April 8, putting at risk FEMA reimbursement for our island’s cleanup.

Against this background, unscrupulous landscape management companies, many from out of state, combined with opportunistic property owners, are complicating and expanding the necessary cleanup by pruning landscaping and palm trees and adding it to the pine trees, water oaks and other legitimate materials that resulted from Hurricane Matthew’s destructive violence.

Drive around your neighborhoods and you will see the “growth” of the legitimate piles of debris with green-leaf yard plants and palm fronds.

Who benefits? The landscape companies who would ordinarily be required to legitimately dispose of yard waste, but who, because of the crisis, are simply dumping their waste on the roadside. And the property owners, who are benefiting from the lower cost of these landscape companies for pruning their yards of unwanted but undamaged plant life.

Shame on you. Yes, clean up your hurricane-damaged yards, but don’t complicate and lengthen the cleanup of our island by transferring your landscape maintenance costs to our town.

This story was originally published December 7, 2016 at 8:05 PM with the headline "Letter: Not all the debris belongs there."