HOUSTON \u2013 Houston residents across the city have reached out to KPRC 2 News for weeks with one message: their trash still isn\u2019t being picked up.<\/p>\n
From mattresses and old furniture to tree limbs and broken appliances, neighbors say the piles are growing along with their frustration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mattress\u2026 the chair\u2026 the wine bottle. It\u2019s killing the grass. I\u2019ve not seen the truck come by,\u201d one person said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just heavy trash. Houstonians say recycling and basic pickup have also fallen behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been calling everywhere. Trash is still here\u2026 over a week ago,\u201d one viewer said.<\/p>\n
After yet another viewer reached out about mounting trash in their neighborhood, KPRC 2\u2019s Re\u2019Chelle Turner went straight to City Hall to get answers.<\/p>\n
And in an exclusive interview, Mayor John Whitmire shared a new plan he says will bring immediate relief.<\/p>\n
Mayor Whitmire confirmed the city will begin partnering with private contractors starting Wednesday morning to help clear the backlog.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to play catch up by outsourcing to private companies and then we\u2019re going to come back with a new model where we will pick up on demand,\u201d Mayor Whitmire said.<\/p>\n
He says crews will begin work in Southwest Houston.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got the equipment and the personnel rolling out tomorrow. They\u2019re going to start in southwest Houston, and we\u2019re going to do a couple of city sweeps in the next month,\u201d Mayor Whitmire said.<\/p>\n
Sharpstown resident and KPRC2 viewer Jana invited our crew to see what her neighborhood has been dealing with. While she didn\u2019t want to appear on camera, she allowed us to follow her street by street as piles of trash stretched block after block.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kind of got tired. We picked ours up and hauled it off just because I have friends that could help us but a lot of people don\u2019t,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Jana pointed out brown, dead trees, rotting furniture, and trash that she says has been untouched for months.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can tell some of these trees are brown. We got beds down there, stuff. This furniture to my left has been here forever. You can tell the green trees from the brown trees how long they\u2019ve been sitting. Here, the house to the left,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She continued, describing what she sees daily on her way to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wonder how long that\u2019s been sitting there. Months. Months. Because I go this way to the hospital. You know, this has been sitting here. There\u2019s some houses they have toilets out. Dead trees. I mean, it\u2019s been here a while,\u201d she told KPRC2\u2019s Re\u2019Chelle Turner.<\/p>\n
Re\u2019Chelle asked the mayor directly how long he believes it will take to get the city caught up.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully sooner than later. We will. We\u2019re committed to it. It\u2019s a priority. I live in Houston. I know it\u2019s a problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After leaving City Hall, Re\u2019Chelle called Jana to share the mayor\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to City Hall and spoke to the Mayor, and he said starting tomorrow, they\u2019re going to have private contractors that are working with Solid Waste, who are going to be focused on heavy trash pickup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jana\u2019s reaction was immediate:<\/p>\n
\u201cAwesome! Well, thank you so much. I\u2019ll put it out there on Next Door Neighbor,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
KPRC 2 will continue following the heavy trash relief efforts as crews begin work.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 Houston residents across the city have reached out to KPRC 2 News for weeks with one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3084,24527,8509,56,58,57,36693,4476,8508,4990,36694],"class_list":["post-73703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-city-hall","tag-delays","tag-heavy-trash-pickup","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-waste-relief-efforts","tag-mayor-john-whitmire","tag-solid-waste","tag-trash","tag-trash-backlog-houston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}