ABC 33/40 - Birmingham News, Weather, SportsNew direction for Center Point tornado cleanup

Storm clean up in Center Point is slowing down. It's another repercussion from Jefferson County's financial crisis. The cost of a cleanup is now dipping into city reserves to foot the bill.

Piles are still lining streets and front yards here in Center Point. Debris is being separated into housing fragments and tree branches and limbs- to be recycled, but in the past few weeks the piles haven't changed much.

"Everything has to be separated in order for the city to come out and haul it away," Paul Sesson, contract project manager from "The Go To Guy" said.

So far, contractors and crews have removed about 12,000 cubic yards of debris but they've got about 4 times that amount left to go.

"You have to wait on the city to come through and pick up the limbs and branches off the side of the road," Sesson said.

But it's getting the debris up out of each of these yards that's the problem. The county is responsible for clearing roads and right of ways but after big cuts, there's not much help to be found.

"They have equipment sitting,  but they don't have personnel to run it," Mayor Tom Henderson, Center Point said. "With the storms we've had before, they've cleaned up the right of ways and stuff, but this is a little different since they don't have the money they've had or the crews they've had available."

So tomorrow, the city of Center Point is signing a contract with a company to get the rest of the debris removed at a price tag of just under $400,000.  With no federal aid yet and very few county workers available to help out, cash for the cleanup will come right out of the city budget.

"It's going to affect our budget quite a bit," Mayor Henderson said. "Fortunately, we've been planning and saving for something of this nature since we started the city ten years ago."

Crews Estimate it will take about two months to get it all cleared away.