CLAY COUNTY, Fla. – Clay County leaders on Monday encouraged residents to utilize curbside collection services to avoid long waits at the Rosemary Hill Solid Waste Management Facility.
Video from a viewer showed dozens of cars and trucks lined up over the weekend to throw their garbage away at the landfill, but officials said that curbside collection services for garbage and recyclables in Clay County will continue to operate as scheduled amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Residents are asked to bag their garbage for curbside pickup and make sure recyclables are placed securely in the recycle bin and not bagged.
Staff at the landfill said they noticed people coming more and more in the last two weeks to offload their garbage. They said people thought trash pickup was canceled because of COVID-19, but that’s not true.
“We are getting a really big rush at the Rosemary Hill facility,” Milton Towns, interim director at the Clay County Environmental Services Department, told News4Jax on Monday.
According to Towns, people have been coming to the landfill so frequently, it’s similar to post-hurricane traffic to the garbage facility.
“We have had lines. Today was a day where our lines became very long, similar to what we see in post-disaster clean up just with the number,” Towns said.
Some people waited 30 minutes just to drop off their garbage.
The staff said they’ve been tracking every vehicle that comes in and they’re seeing many more during the weekdays.
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Towns said he hopes that people can wait for normal garbage pickup because he wants the small staff and residents to be safe by practicing social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
