When Vermont officials reupped two standing contracts earlier this year for large-scale debris removal, few imagined that the state would ever need them. But this summer’s floods proved officials — and their models — wrong, according to Ben Rose, Vermont Emergency Management’s recovery and mitigation chief.
“Long story short,” Rose said, “it became pretty clear, very quickly, that the flooding was going to generate an awful lot of debris.”
As of Monday night, state contractors had removed at least 4,430 tons of flood waste from public rights of way throughout Vermont, according to figures provided by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. About 70% of the debris has come from residences and about 30% from businesses, the data shows.
Last month, the state activated debris removal contracts with two different companies. One, Florida-based Ceres Environmental, is in charge of picking up and hauling debris across central Vermont, in some of the hardest-hit municipalities in the state. It’s doing so with help from a network of smaller subcontractors in the area, according to Rose.
Ceres Environmental is one of the largest debris removal companies in the country. It’s made about $2.5 billion in contracts over the last decade, according to its website, and played a major role in the cleanup following Hurricane Katrina in the southern U.S.
The other contract is with Tetra Tech, a California-based consulting and engineering firm, which is tasked with monitoring the debris cleanup work and drafting nightly reports for state officials. This monitoring system allows Vermont to be eligible for reimbursement by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and aligns with best practices, Rose said.
“There has to be an independent party who is monitoring and verifying the source, the journey and the decision of the debris,” he said. “It’s cradle to grave.”
Natural disaster debris removal is a major industry nationwide. In 2017, FEMA provided almost $10 billion to U.S. states and territories to pay for debris removal and other emergency work projects in the wake of hurricanes and wildfires, according to a 2020 report on the industry’s practices by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The report found that the federal government is vulnerable to fraudulent debris removal schemes, such as contractors misrepresenting the amount, source or type of debris they are picking up, as well as to reported bribery, collusion and false invoicing.
Rose said he was aware of the potential for fraud in the debris removal industry, though neither he nor other state officials knew of any such wrongdoing in Vermont since the flooding started in early July.
Ceres Environmental and Tetra Tech did not respond to requests for comment.
Several Vermont municipalities that were hit hardest by the July flooding — including Montpelier, Barre, Berlin, Middlesex and Cabot — have signed agreements with the state, Rose said, meaning they’ll work with Ceres to get their debris removed. “The lion’s share” of the debris picked up so far has come out of Montpelier, Rose said.
At the same time, other municipalities have entered into their own agreements with debris removal contractors, according to Rose. In these smaller-scale cases, towns could designate local contractors to monitor the debris cleanup, state officials said.
Meanwhile, local trash haulers, such as Casella, have also continued to pick up flood waste at the private homes and businesses they were serving before the floods.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also has a contractor on the ground in Vermont — Missouri-based Environmental Restoration, LLC — picking up hazardous waste and transporting it to a temporary collection site in Middlesex, according to Josh Kelly, solid waste program manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Kelly said this collection site, at the former Vermont State Police barracks on Route 2, is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., for residents and businesses to bring in chemicals, paint, toxic cleaners, oil, fuel and other materials from damaged areas. (The department announced this week that the Middlesex site would close Saturday, Aug. 12.)
Meanwhile, the state is working with another contractor — Tennessee-based Servpro — to clean up flood damage and debris at 17 state office buildings across Montpelier that were impacted by the storm, according to David DiBiase, deputy commissioner of the Department of Buildings and General Services.
Of the contractors the department had on retainer when the flooding started, “no one was able to handle the size and scope of the devastation that we incurred,” DiBiase said, so officials had to quickly launch and complete a procurement process.
Much of the nonhazardous debris getting picked up is first taken to Casella’s Central Vermont Transfer Station in East Montpelier, Rose said. It’s then trucked up to the state’s only landfill, which is located in Coventry and is also owned by Casella.
The state’s contact with Ceres Environmental lays out how much the state will pay for certain types of debris, based on what is picked up and how far it gets transported. For instance, the state would pay about $30 to transport 1 ton of aggregate a dozen miles, but about $200 to transport 1 ton of asbestos-containing debris the same distance.
Rose estimated that, as of last week, contractors had picked up about $1 million worth of debris statewide, though he said no official figures were available yet. He said he does not expect the final debris pickup cost, before FEMA reimbursement, to exceed $2 million.
