Citizens ask City for help in picking up limbs and logs

By Randy Bell    

The City of Clinton is making it clear that it’s no longer able to pick up heavy loads of logs left behind by contractors trimming trees which interfere with power lines.  At the Board of Aldermen work session on July 20, three citizens with piles of wood on their property asked the City for some help.

Joedda Gore and her husband Paul, who live at 1450 East Northside Drive, appeared before the Board and Mayor Will Purdie to ask that logs from three large pine trees which an Entergy contractor cut earlier this year be picked up.  Mrs. Gore told the Board a City crew hauled away some other tree debris last fall, and, when she placed a work order with the Public Works Department in February to have these logs picked up, she wasn’t told that the City couldn’t do that anymore.  She calls it “a communication breakdown.”

“Limb pickup and debris pickup is a service the City offers,” Purdie says, but he points out there’s a limit to what the equipment can handle.  “I can’t really speak historically to what’s happened in the past.  I can say [the Gores’ request] is outside the scope of what we’re able to pick up now.”

The mayor says it’s not Entergy’s responsibility to haul off the logs, because the Gores signed a waiver saying that they would take care of it; but Mrs. Gore says they were still hoping the City would pick up the logs like it did before.  Instead, they’ve been summoned to Environmental Court. 

“This has gotten way out of hand,” she says.

Another Clintonian who spoke at the work session was Mack Hughes of 1102 Tanglewood Drive.  He had received a warning from the City over issues, including a pile of limbs and logs a utility contractor left behind in his yard.

“[The contractor] picked up all the limbs and placed them against my fence,” Hughes says.  “And then they took the big logs that they cut and they stacked them in front of [the limbs].  They never came back, and it’s been three and a half months.”

Hughes points out that the crew failed to trim a more dangerous tree. 

“If it falls, it’s going to tear down power lines, it’s going to tear down cable lines and it might tear the street light down.  It’s humongous.”

According to a City ordinance, utility crews are supposed to pick up their tree trimmings within five days.   The day after the July 20 meeting, an Entergy contractor was sent to Hughes’ home to remove the limbs and logs.

Clinton also requires commercial contractors hired by homeowners to haul away any trees they cut. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: As of July 29, the Gores have removed the logs at their own expense.