The city of Casper is moving forward with a massive cleanup effort after broken tree limbs and branches littered parks and made several city streets impassable during last week’s record snow storm.

Pete Meyers, an assistant public services director with the city of Casper, says the city has rented additional wood chippers and shredders for its six branch collection sites.

He also says city sanitation workers have picked up several thousand pounds of branches.

"We received more than 20 tons of branches (on Tuesday) through our extra collection routes - that's just from our solid waste crews collecting on their extra collection day," Meyers said. "We received 30 tons on Monday - it's just a major amount of branches any way that you slice it."

Meyers says the cost of the cleanup shouldn’t impact the city too severely. He says, though city officials don’t currently have a running cleanup estimate, the city has set aside an overtime budget for events that cannot be accurately predicted before the start of a new budget year.

Meyers also says the city will likely pull from reserve accounts once the job is finished and Casper City Council will have to pass a budget amendment.

"Cities must be prepared for emergencies of one sort or another, and those emergencies invariably involve a certain amount of cost - that's why we have reserves, so we can help pay for these things," Meyers said. "Hopefully, some of this will be covered by insurance, or other sorts of things, but it's a cost that the city is going to have to bear."

You can view a list of city-operated tree branch drop-off sites here.

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