New Orleans kind of stinks.
City officials pleaded for patience from residents yesterday as they detailed the slow-going process underway to deal with piles of rotting trash across the city two weeks after Hurricane Ida’s landfall.
About one third of households have seen no garbage collections whatsoever since the storm.
But even in areas where officials say a first pass collection has already occurred, they acknowledged that the volume of trash was so high that garbage haulers were only taking refuse from the 95-gallon residential bins and leaving trash bags to fester in order to get through more of their routes.
Meanwhile, only about 5% of an estimated 54,000 tons of tree limbs, roof shingles and other debris left by the storm has been collected since the city’s emergency contractor began that work last week.
