The January 3rd winter storm event was a significant heavy snow event that impacted our region and community in many ways. The heavy snow caused much damage in various parts of the city in bringing trees and limbs down within the public rights-of-way and on private property.
The City’s Public Works Department and its contractors have been working to remove damaged and downed trees and limbs resulting from this storm event that caused extensive tree damage throughout the city, which is estimated to be at least $250,000 in damage to urban street trees. The Department’s crews, and its partner Tree Fredericksburg, are jointly assessing conditions for structurally pruning those trees within City maintained public rights-of-way that can be saved and are identifying those trees determined to be too far damaged for removal. The vegetation debris removal and pruning has been determined to require more time and effort than initially estimated. At this point, the clean-up effort is ongoing and is prioritized based on safety, location, severity, and volume of traffic. It is anticipated this work will continue over the next couple of months.
The Department of Parks, Recreation & Events is still in the process of assessing the trees damaged in City parks and trails to determine an appropriate course of action to address these trees and to minimize the impacts to these facilities during this process. Several parks have been closed for safety reasons due to multiple hanging limbs and downed trees.
In consideration of the above effort and its duration, City crews are primarily focused on addressing public trees and performing debris removal efforts for those trees through mid-February. At which time, City crews will split their focus to assist residents with removal of fallen tree limbs from the January 3rd storm event.
To facilitate this process as expeditiously as possible, residents may begin now to place their vegetative debris for pick up in the following manner:
- Limbs must be cut in 4-foot lengths, tied with string or twine (no tape or wire) in bundles of 50 pounds or less
- No tree limbs greater than 12 inches in diameter will be picked up
- No root balls will be picked up
- Limbs are to be placed in the utility strip in front of a resident’s home
- Debris should be stacked as neatly as possible and cannot block or impede travel-ways, parking lanes or sidewalks
Residents will be responsible for the removal of larger debris, and it is suggested to consider employing a commercial contractor for proper removal.
Additionally, residents are also encouraged to continue to take their tree debris to the R-Board Landfill located at 489 Eskimo Hill Rd, Stafford, VA 22554. The R-Board Landfill has extended free drop-off for residential storm debris from this event until January 24th. See www.r-board.org for more information.
Crews are working throughout the city and will be picking up debris as quickly as possible in the coming months. Please note that future inclement weather events will require crews to respond to these events, which will add some delay to this process.
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For more information, please contact Fredericksburg Public Works online at www.Fredericksburgva.gov or by calling 540-372-1023.