PHARR -- Nearly 15,000 homes in rural Hidalgo County sustained damage from last month's Hurricane Dolly or were otherwise affected by the storm, according to the latest estimates from local officials.

Dolly came ashore in the Rio Grande Valley on July 23 as Category 2 storm, flooding many areas of the region and wreaking havoc with winds topping 100 mph.

County leaders estimate 14,752 homes were affected or sustained damage from Dolly in rural Hidalgo County, with about 306 homes utterly destroyed. Those figures amount to more than $174 million in rural property damage in Hidalgo County alone, according to Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas.

Salinas and emergency management officials updated city and county precinct leaders Wednesday on what cities need to do to receive aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to clean up and recover from the storm's damage.

Aug. 23 is the deadline for cities to register with FEMA for damage assistance. After that, each city will have a "kick-off meeting" with a FEMA officer and will have 60 days after that to assess and report its storm-related damage expenses.

Meanwhile, efforts to return the county to a state of relative normalcy continue.

All but one water pump remained at work in the county Wednesday, and water vacuum trucks wrapped up their duties the day before, Salinas said.

On Wednesday, floodwater remained only in an area near the intersection of Farm-to-Market Road 493 and Farm-to-Market Road 2812, east of the city of Edinburg.

In Pharr, Frank De Vries picked up a tangle of tree branches and other brush Dolly strewed across the area last month.

It took him only about a dozen grasps to load up his vehicle, which resembles a dump truck.

"When you have big piles, you can reach it up and put it in there," he said.

De Vries, 33, has been driving what he calls a "grapple truck" for days since Dolly blew through the Valley.

Using a mechanical arm mounted to his truck, he can pick up loads of brush ranging from large to small

De Vries' truck can handle up to 46 cubic yards of brush. He says he can haul about 14 loads of brush every day to one of five dump sites set up across the county.

But there's still plenty of debris to go.

As of Wednesday, more than 5,750 loads - totaling more than 261,000 cubic yards of storm-related brush and debris - had been picked up by crews contracted by Hidalgo County.

John Noble of AshBritt Environmental - a Pompano Beach, Fla.-based company contracted by Hidalgo County to spearhead debris removal here and in many cities across the region - said crews so far have not seen any decline in the amounts of brush and debris being cleaned up.

Dow Knight, vice president of operations and logistics for AshBritt, said county leaders have set a Sept. 15 deadline for residents to move their debris near the road if they want it removed. If anyone wants the county to pick up their debris for free, it needs to be by the curb or road by then.

Crews plan to continue picking up the debris until all of it has been removed, which should take about two weeks from Sept. 15, Knight said.

As much as 95 percent of the debris picked up has been from plants and trees, making it easy to mulch it and recycle the material.

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Jared Taylor covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4439.