City Council members under pressure from constituents to remove the thousands of piles of Hurricane Harvey wreckage on Houston curbs spent Wednesday morning shouting over each other about the topic before delaying a proposal Mayor Sylvester Turner said is needed to meet the city's goal of trucking 150,000 cubic yards of that debris to landfills each day.

Houston had removed a total of 400,000 cubic yards of debris by Tuesday night, the mayor said, noting the ongoing struggle to draw enough trucks into service. The difficulty is partly because the region is competing with a similar cleanup in Florida and partly because the debris removal rate the city had received through competitive bidding before Harvey proved too low to attract subcontractors.

Turner said he has received approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be reimbursed for 90 percent of the city's debris removal costs not only at the competitively bid rate, but also at a newly negotiated rate that is 50 percent higher.

That higher rate will entice more subcontractors onto Houston streets, he said, but also will require the city to contribute more to what now is expected to be a $260 million effort.

To that end, council considered allocating an additional $60 million to its main debris removal contract. That the item was delayed one week - over Turner's strenuous objections – likely will not have a noticeable effect on the cleanup, but it reflected council members' unrest over a lack of communication about the debris removal effort that had left them flat-footed in answering constituents' questions.

"There's a lot of debris everywhere. I know people want it up right now," Turner said. Still, he said the process may be slower than desired because some truckers have sought even higher rates. "I'm not going to be aggressive in going beyond the FEMA-approved rate. I'm not going to assume an added amount more beyond that when we don't know where those dollars are going to come from."

Against a backdrop of intense constituent interest, the discussion quickly went sideways.

Turner already was miffed at questions from Councilmen Jerry Davis and Michael Kubosh about what value prime contractor DRC was providing for its fee when Councilman Larry Green chimed in, seeking information about minority contracting and when trucks were slated to visit neighborhoods in his southwest Houston district.

When Turner declined to answer his queries, Green responded by tagging the item, forcing a one-week delay.

The mayor accused Green of slowing the debris removal process and even suggested the other council members were acting irresponsibly by not voting to override Green's tag - one of the few powers granted to council members in Houston's strong-mayor system.

"No one is in a position right now to provide that specificity. There's debris all over the city in large amounts," Turner said. "Everybody wants it out of their districts. I got that. But it's citywide, not just district-specific."

Green defended his decision and questioned whether a week's delay would change anything when the current contract is not at risk of expiring or running out of funds. He added that Councilman Dave Martin had been sent crews from the city of San Antonio to clean up Kingwood and that Martin had been receiving detailed information about the debris removed and the next areas to be visited.

Martin retorted that he had better information because he had worked for it, angering his colleagues.

"Maybe that's some Kingwood stuff that's happening," Green said, "but it's not happening in (District) K."

Turner was furious, and appeared to question Green's motives.

"That statement is blatantly false," he said. "If you're after something else in terms of subcontracts, say it."

Other council members kept their tempers in check, but joined Green in asking for clearer information.

"Just give us a plan: Where you intend to be and when you intend to be there," Councilman Mike Laster said.

The key focus right now, the mayor said at his post-meeting news conference, is adding trucks to the roads to remove an "unprecedented" amount of debris, then to improve communications.

"I've spoken to a number of these contractors and subs, and when I'm talking to the subs the thing they keep asking me (is), 'Mayor are you going to pay us? Are there going to be any delays?' I'm telling them, 'We are going to pay you,'" Turner said after the meeting. "What happened today doesn't strengthen my hand. It sends the wrong signal."