CYPRESS – “I would like for them to pick up the trash and do it as they promise. Trash days are Wednesdays and Saturdays,” Brenda Taylor said.
Residents in one Katy subdivision are fed up with trash piling up on the streets.
But they are not the only ones dealing with the nuisance. On Tuesday, KPRC 2 spoke about trash pickup problems in west Houston, and on Monday residents in Cypress expressed their frustrations.
On Wednesday, residents in Katy told KPRC 2’s Re’Chelle Turner they haven’t had services since Christmas.
If you drive down Lakecrest Forest Drive in Katy, you will notice trash bags up and down the street.
“If I wanted to put my house up for sale right now, there wouldn’t be anyone to come and look at it,” resident Brenda Taylor said.
Residents say Texas Pride Disposal hasn’t picked up the trash in the last two and half weeks.
“I’m paying for something, a service that I’m not receiving. I mean look at the trash. This is from Christmas; my kid’s Christmas presents and boxes that we have already opened. It’s ridiculous,” Heather King said.
“The other issue is them mixing the recycle in with the garbage,” Taylor said.
Texas Pride says the recent freeze and high volumes from the holidays caused delays, but Brenda Taylor says she is not buying their excuses.
“I don’t because If they are fully staffed then that means they have taken on too many contracts and can’t fulfill them all or somebody’s not doing their job,” she said.
KPRC reached out to the owner and operations manager for answers, but our calls went to voicemail. Homeowners are tired of the smelly situation.
“Where are people going to put the trash? I have a baby and can’t keep it inside the house. The trash has to come and take it away,” Juan Montalvo said.
Residents say they started paying $60.50 a quarter back in September for trash and recycling services. Some of them are planning to meet with their HOA to see if they can help with the issue.
Some homeowners who live near Spring, Cyfair, and Cypress are frustrated and asking for help after they say mounting trash is starting to stink up their neighborhoods.
Audra Paszkowski said the trash service in her Cypress neighborhood, simply put, stinks.
“We’ve had problems with it before and just recently it’s gotten worse. We can go a week, or a week and a half without trash pickup. Nobody calls us back. No refunds,” Paszkowski said.
Paszkowski, who lives in the Heather Wood subdivision, uses Texas Pride Disposal for trash and recycling. She said the company has been inconsistent with her pickup schedule for the past three weeks.
“This isn’t the first time,” she said. “It happened over the summer, too, and he (the owner) keeps blaming it on COVID. But at some point, life has to go on and you have to keep your end of the deal, and the deal is Wednesday/Saturday pickup and we’re not getting that.”
Several other homeowners told KPRC2 that piling trash is an eyesore in their neighborhood.
“I think they’re signing in way too many customers they don’t have the capacity to do it or they don’t have the management that understands how to get it done properly,” said Sean Llorente,
KPRC2′s Taisha Walker spoke with Texas Pride’s owner, Kevin Atkinson, Monday by phone. Atkinson said he proactively suspended and delayed many routes due to the most recent freeze and concerns for his employee’s safety. He also said with high Christmas volumes and disposal sites closed for the holidays, trash pickup got backed up.
He said he anticipated crews would collect the trash in the Cypress neighborhood on Wednesday, but Atkinson sent a trash truck Monday afternoon, within hours of KPRC’s call.
“But if it takes news crews being here to get my trash picked up, something’s wrong,” Llorente said. “And something is gonna keep being wrong because we can’t have a news crew here every Wednesday and Thursday,” Llorente said.
The subdivision, which has fewer than 500 homes, is too small to contract with some of the larger waste companies.
“The issue with this neighborhood is that everybody pays their dues to the trash company individually,” he said. “So the homeowners association doesn’t have the power to say ‘hey, we want our money back for the entire quarter because we don’t know who has paid or hasn’t paid.’”
Thursday night, the Heather Wood HOA held a board meeting where three solid waste companies gave presentations to board members and made bids for a contract. On Friday, board members confirm they were parting ways with Texas Pride and entering a contract with a different company.