Temple City hires help to clean up ice storm, and residents wait weeks for removal

Temple, Texas (KWTX) – The ice may be gone, but the temple has more than a month of debris left after the Central Texas freeze.

One resident refused to pay for brush removal for weeks because he knew the city would do it for free.

“They said if I put most of the trash here, they could lose $200, but the city was supposed to take it all away for free,” said Thomas Teeter, a Temple resident.

Teeter has lived in his temple home for 14 years and says he has never seen anything like it. He says the day after the ice melted, they put all the trash in a huge 10-foot mound a few feet from the curb.

But as the weeks passed, rain and wind from recent storms forced the massive pile closer to the street.

The city says they know it will take some time, but help is on the way. In fact, help is now in parts of the temple.

“We realized it was just too much to do,” says Allison O’Connor with Temple City.

The city hired D&J Enterprises of Alabama to help. The cost of their help is $400,000, but the city says it won’t be something residents pay extra for.

“They stay in one area until that area gets light and then they move to another area. Meanwhile, city trucks will focus their efforts on high volume so they don’t have to try to do both,” adds O’Connor.

For residents like Teeter, he says the city should do whatever they need to do.

“It is necessary. Because they cannot handle the current situation.”

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