TIFTON — Waste management contractor Ryland Environmental has been hard at work cleaning up the city following the storm, as reported at the most recent city council meeting.

Aaron Sowa, district manager for Ryland, reported at the Oct. 8 meeting that much of the cleanup effort on their part was progressing smoothly, but would still take some time to finish altogether.

Sowa noted that the residential curbside garbage pickup and frontload route services were on schedule, and most amounts of municipal soft waste were getting back to normal levels.

The waste management service is currently running three of its trucks six days a week, Sowa said, with plans to continue this routine until everything had returned to more normal procedures.

In regards to cleanup, he reported that his team planned to take each of their routes street by street, making a first pass to clean each road, then moving on to the next. Once all of the routes were cleared, Sowa said that Ryland would take another trip through all of the routes, giving residents more time and another opportunity to have their tree debris from Hurricane Helene removed.

Sowa announced that the first pass on Ryland’s Monday route, which was one of the heavier affected areas in the city, had been fully cleared, and the cleanup crew was moving on to work on their Tuesday and Wednesday routes. He expected to have all four routes completed within next week.

Altogether, the cleanup effort brought in 104 loads totaling 426.3 tons of debris and refuse as of Oct. 7, Sowa said.

He provided a visual overview of each section of the service’s routes, how many loads had needed to be hauled away, and how many tons were hauled off.

Sowa did note that four roads were still impassable, but attested that they were all alleyways that cleanup crews and linemen were having trouble accessing.

Mayor Julie Smith praised Sowa and Ryland for their efforts in supporting the recovery effort in Tifton, recounting that Sowa had been hard at work assisting ESG Operations in cleanup shortly after the storm had blown through town.

The division manager in turn offered his praise to the City of Tifton, claiming their swift response to the hurricane had been among the best he’d seen among the affected communities.