TUNICA, MS -- More mess after the flooding in Tunica County. We're talking trash. It's everywhere you look in the Cutoff, and the people who are trying to clean it up face an uphill battle.
"You've got to pile it up in your yard," says JT Smith, "then if the county doesn't pick it up, you have to use your own truck. You have to run it over the levee a dozen times just to unload it. It's absolutely frustrating."
Frustrating, because when Smith began cleaning up, he thought the county would be picking up his trash.
"When all this started, the county told us just pile it on the road," he says. "They said they'd pick it up. Then they changed their mind. They're not going to pick it up."
Tunica County leaders says the Cutoff is private property, so residents have to bring everything out themselves.
"That means all the trash," says Tunica County spokesperson Larry Liddell. "All the trash."
It's too much for Allen Smith.
"You can't haul it over there to those five dumpsters," he tells abc24.com. "That would take up 15 to 20 dumpsters. It just makes it impossible."
He points out how much of the stinky, rotting filth is still sitting in the Cutoff.
"The county just really doesn't seem to care," he says, "so it has us all stuck in a spot."
County officials designated an area right outside the levee for trash removal, setting out several bins the county empties each morning. But some residents, like the Smiths, say it's still not enough room, and it makes cleaning up twice as hard.
"It makes everything more difficult," says Allen Smith.
"We're stuck in the middle," says JT. "Some people haven't even started cleaning up yet."
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality is picking up hazardous waste, but that's separate from the household trash pickup.
