Wiping sweat from her brow Thursday, Debbie Robichaux heaved a twisted tree limb onto a heaping pile of debris and sighed.

Piles of debris, some 8 feet tall, have become the newest yard ornaments throughout many neighborhoods, particularly those just outside Slidell’s city limits. It’s an eye soar many are still waiting on to be removed.

“The parish has been really slow to respond,” Robichaux said.

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As the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav wanes, people throughout the parish, mostly in and around Slidell, are wondering when their debris will be hauled away.

But parish officials have one quick answer: “We’re coming. Be patient. We’re coming,” said parish spokesman Suzanne Parsons Stymiest.

Fleets of parish public works trucks and those from the parish’s contracted debris hauler, Abita Springs-based Stranco Inc., have scrambled to remove debris as fast as possible.

“We expect to have the whole parish done in two to four weeks,” Stymiest said.

Parish President Kevin Davis even went so far as to charge clean up in unincorporated St. Tammany to the parish’s tab — a $2 million cost that makes up about 10 percent of the parish budget — before finding out if the Federal Emergency Management Agency would foot the bill.

“We don’t want to wait any longer,” Davis said at the time, about a week after Gustav struck.

FEMA later decided to fund the debris removal for the parish and municipalities parishwide. Now the effort, divided into four quadrants, is running in earnest.

Focused first on the hardest hit coastal areas in southeast St. Tammany such as Carr Drive and Lakeview Road on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, crews fanned out to the rest of the parish this weekend. Private subdivisions, 68 in all of unincorporated St. Tammany, are not included in the process.

The four quadrants include areas north of Louisiana Highway 36 and east of Louisiana Highway 1082. The northwest quadrant includes areas of U.S. Highway 190 and west of La. 1082, while the southeast quadrant consists of areas south of La. 36 and east of Louisiana Highway 434.

The southwest quadrant consists of areas south of La. 36 and U.S. 190 and west of La. 434. Crews are working in every area daily, Stymiest said.

But some areas such as Carr Drive, littered with several feet of bayou cane, overturned wheelbarrows and other debris, took more time to clean than expected. In one bayou, parallel to U.S. Highway 11 in Slidell, the cane was so thick a muskrat skirted across the top without sinking, Stymiest said.

“That one particular area was just a very large cleanup,” she said.

Already, debris haulers there averaged 100 loads removed per day in trucks 30 to 50 feet long, she said. By Friday, Carr Drive was clean.

No doubt “St. Tammany residents have a serious amount of debris to contend with,” Davis said.

But back in Robichaux’s subdivision alone, every other home has a stash of either downed trees, the remnants of a ravaged pier or a combination of both, three weeks after Hurricane Gustav slammed ashore.

In other neighborhoods like Crossgates and Quail Ridge, dozens of piles of debris border streets.

Although residents complained of the eyesores, most remain appreciative it will be removed.

“I’m glad they haven’t come yet,” Cindy Odend’hal said while standing in front of her Lake Village home. “I’m waiting for my son to take apart my fence that was knocked over in the storm to put out there.”