Illegal dumping problem in the Bronx

WAKEFIELD (WABC) -- Jack O'Shea stepped out of his elevator business on Bullard Avenue in the Bronx on Monday to find a fresh pile of trash, no less than a dozen bags.

"All this got dumped here over the weekend. Construction debris, ceiling tiles, plaster and lathe," O'Shea said.

Some of it spilled onto his truck.

"Every Monday morning we call Sanitation after the weekend. Sometimes they come, but more times they don't," he said.

He claims this is a weekly occurrence that has gone on for years, and it costs him about $700 a week to clean it up.

That's right. He spends his own money, and his workers valuable time, to pick up the garbage. It's a job that he believes the Sanitation Department should do.

In a written response, the Sanitation Department says in part that it "cleaned the area several times in March."

All kinds of garbage, though, are illegally dumped along this two block section. We even found a box filled with old car parts, even old licenses, just tossed here.

And at the end of the street in plain sight was a pile of junk. That pile sat there for at least two weeks as we monitored the problem, not picked up by the city.

The Sanitation Department said it will monitor the area and re-address the dump outs.

Six days later after we first spotted the garbage, it was still sitting there. The real problem, though, can be seen on a nearby hillside where clearly people have been dumping garbage for quite sometime.

You get a much better look from NewsCopter 7 of what has become a disgusting hillside of garbage more than a block long, cascading down toward the Metro North tracks.

It's everything. Car parts, garbage, broken toys -- all illegally tossed over the wire fencing.

"I think the best thing to do is set up cameras in the area or have a patrol guy monitor the area," Harvey Vauclena said.

While Sanitation points out it has impounded several vehicles for illegal dumping in the area, the department says it is also contacting those who are responsible for maintaining the areas.

Just who will clean up the mess on the hill is still in question. The good news not long after we made Sanitation aware of the problem, workers began picking up the trash along the two blocks of Bullard Avenue.

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new york city, bronx, wakefield, local news, tim fleischer

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