Photograph of debris in Staten Island by Tod Seelie / Suckapants
Hurricane Sandy's devastation has left tons of debris all over. And all of it is going upstate. Newsday reports that there's "245,000 cubic yards of waste, which is enough to cover more than 13 football fields with 10 feet of debris," in Nickerson Beach Park—which will soon be moved via barge. One person involved with the debris removal said, "It's so sad -- you see people's lives in that pile. You're actually removing people's lives."
Newsday describes the process, "Three barges will be used -- filling one at a time -- to carry the debris out Reynolds Channel to the Atlantic Ocean and up the Hudson River. Officials estimate that about 5,000 tons (roughly 10,000 cubic yards) of debris will be removed from Nickerson each day. Using barges will keep 250 trucks off highways each day."
As for the debris in New York City, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of the operation: "At Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, the Corps processed 52,000 cubic yards of debris -- 37 barge loads -- and sent it to the Port of Coeymans south of Albany to be taken to landfills in Waterloo and Colonie... t Jacob Riis Park in Rockaway, Queens, the Corps processed debris from the Rockaways, Roxbury and Breezy Point, where more than 100 homes burned. What had been about 400,000 cubic yards of household waste has mostly been trucked to landfills, [spokesman Jeffrey] Hawk said, with only a few thousand cubic yards left."
Here's a FEMA video showing the debris removal process:
It's believed that the USACOE has removed about 223,000 cubic yards after 3 weeks. Also: ""Before we have authority to pick up anything off private property, we have to get a signed [ROE] from the homeowner or landowner."
