How much did it cost the city of Port Huron to clean up the July 20 storm damage?
The cost of clean up and response are in several weeks after a storm swept through central Port Huron, leaving a wake of outages and downed lines and trees.
City Manager James Freed initially alerted City Council members via email on the tallying process on Aug. 7, citing a “voluminous” amount of calls for service for Port Huron’s fire and police departments amid the storm on July 20.
By Monday, he said the total estimate was $290,002, including $271,000 to contractors tapped to lead the cleanup, as well as $3,487 and $11,270 for fire and public works staff overtime and $4,245 in DPW equipment charges.
The storm itself covered what Freed called “the middle belt of the city,” bringing down power infrastructure and dozens of the older trees common for the northern areas of Port Huron. Multiple areas remained without electricity for several days last month while the cleanup continued safely.
“Pine Grove Park looked bad, but (we had) a significant amount of damage on 10th Ave. I mean, there were massive trees that took days to clean up. Pine Grove had some bad ones. A lot of trees on the road right of way came down,” the city manager said in an interview last week. “The trees came uprooted. These weren’t limbs falling off.”
Multiple city parks were affected by downed trees, such as Haynes and Mansfield, according to Nancy Winzer, the city’s parks and recreation director.
At just Pine Grove, however, she said they saw 15 massive trees come down, while five were “kind of on the watch list.”
Set apart by their many decades in age, the Pine Grove trees have long provided shade to visitors of the popular park.
Luckily, officials said they’re planning to replace them.
“The park was closed for like a week as we tried to clean up, but we’re already starting to work on a replacement tree program and replacement trees for there. We’re already starting to get some quotes,” Winzer said last week. “... We’ll put 20 new ones in there, although it doesn’t make up for (the loss). We found pictures from, I think it was, like 1913 with the tree that fell on the fence. Someone sent me that. So, you know they’ve been there since before that. It is quite sad.”
On Monday, City Council members OK’d a resolution to recognize the city’s police, fire, parks, and forestry personnel, as well as DTE Energy, St. Clair County Emergency Management, and other contractors for their effort during and after the storm last month. The resolution was requested by Councilman Jeff Pemberton.
Freed told officials that the trees they planned to bring to the city this fall were more matured trees, likely several inches thick at the trunk.
He referenced the city’s federal designation as an urban forest, adding those replacement trees wouldn’t take from the city’s existing commitment to plant 1,000 new trees citywide in a decade.
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: How much did it cost the city of Port Huron to clean up the July 20 storm damage?
