October 17-18, 2014

I checked 43rd Avenue Friday night, and found this modest* pile (*I guess my standards are so low by now that I consider this pile relatively benign); it included the following:

• the backs of a couple old televisions
• window frames with glass
• a bag of rusted aerosol cans of cleaning fluid (not pictured)

I was conflicted about calling 311 at first since it would have been easy to just drag these few items home and put them out with my own garbage. But I wasn't sure if Sanitation would pick up such items with household trash, and, more importantly, I wanted to make an official complaint about yet another incident of illegal dumping in the same exact spot as the illegal dumping incident of the week before, and the week before that, etc. Oh, and I wasn't too eager to handle the bag of aerosol cans of mystery fluid; I told the 311 operator about these, so hopefully the Sanitation workers who collected them were forewarned.

 

Complaint number 2014MLCO04729; called in 10/17/14

 

Pile of dumped materials that I noticed on October 17, 2014

 

The pile was gone by the next morning. Woohoo!!!

Thank you (again!) DSNY!!!!!

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I am happy to report that this weekend someone began Phase II of the 43rd Avenue Clean-Up Project. [Phase I=basics like trash removal, while Phase II involves beautification attempts such as planting perty flowers or, in this case, graffiti remediation.] Someone painted the graffitied-upon and generally dilapidated-to-the-point-of-being-wrist-slashingly-depressing temporary fence that serves as a beacon to people who are looking for a place to unload their household and industrial waste. The temporary fence surrounds yet another abandoned piece of the Avenue. Once upon a time there was a decent-sized house here; it was torn down several years ago, and the property (which someone nominally owns, according to the Buildings Department sign) has been untouched since. Wait, I take that back: this past April a man collecting bottles made a horrible find either in the confines of the lot or along the adjacent railroad tracks. The few and pithy media accounts gave vague and conflicting reports of the exact location, but I can tell you that for a couple days the fence was open just enough for police and forensics personnel to stream in and out, and the sidewalk along the entire length of the fence was taped off from the public. I didn't know what was going on at the time, and the cops would only say that they were "conducting an investigation." I hope they can solve this case; I feel SO bad for the person they found here. I just pray that they will be identified and can have a proper burial.

Ugh, who knows what other horrible things are in that abandoned lot? Sometimes I peek through the cracks, but all I see is a field full of 4-foot-high weeds. I suppose all  that we (the folks who live nearby) can do is take care of the situation on the other side of the fence.

Anyway, here are the Before and After pictures.



Arrow pointing to the "nasty corner"-- the exact location of most of the piles I encounter.



Perhaps now that the fence is cleaned up a bit, people will be less likely to assume this is an abandoned property/area and less likely to dump here-?!?!? Ya think? Or was that poor tired fence painter just incredibly naïve?