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January 6, 2011 / Brooklyn news / Brooklyn Is Angry

Blizzard fallout! Brooklyn is a garbage dump

The Brooklyn Paper

Talk about a snow job!

Brownstone Brooklyn is still awash in refuse on Thursday, more than 11 days after the first flakes from the Mega-Blizzard of 2010 began.

Normal trash pickup was supposed to resume this Monday, but it did not in most parts of the borough.

Schermerhorn Street in Downtown was in particularly deep doo-doo on Wednesday, with piles of recyclables transforming the block’s topography into something more Fresh Kills than Brooklyn.

“They should have been here yesterday,” blasted Thomas Tuminello, a State Street resident. “It looks like they didn’t do anything.”

Residents said city workers removed household trash on Monday, but left the recyclables, which also should have been removed that same day.

And that’s a problem, according to Carin Solis, a porter at 96 Schermerhorn St.

“People need to have space to walk,” Solis said.

In Park Slope, things weren’t much better, as blocks that were to have pickups on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, never saw a Sanitation truck.

“Nothing’s been done at all,” said Tom Miskel, and Eighth Street resident.

And despite the cold — which keeps the garbage from getting the full summertime stench — vermin are snacking away with seeming impunity.

And in Red Hook, the cold didn’t even stop the putrid smell of trash along Van Brunt Street, which on Monday stunk like the bottom of a Dumpster.

“The response to the storm was totally inadequate,” said neighborhood activist Lou Sones. “Somewhere, the administration dropped the ball.”

Sanitation workers finally came to neighborhood activist Sones’s block, Conover Street, on Tuesday night.

Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said on Monday that trash collection won’t be caught up for another week, and recycling pickups won’t resume until this weekend.

City workers — already under fire for their laggard response to last week’s two-foot snowfall — are now being investigated by federal prosecutors for allegedly sabotaging the clean-up effort to protest budget and staff cuts by Mayor Bloomberg.

And in the end, who pays for that? Other city workers, like a Department of Transportation worker named Michael, who was on a Downtown street trying to repair a meter that was buried under trash and snow.

“It’s not funny,” he said.

Reader Feedback

Tobey from PS says:
That's a good one at the end of the article:

"And in the end, who pays for that? Other city workers"

Well they are paid for this repair and with a bit of luck, it's overtime baby!

What a shame

Please don't call it a "mega blizzard", it was blizzard nothing more.
Jan. 6, 2011, 4:06 pm
Joey from Clinton Hills says:
that building in the photo isn't a brownstone.
Jan. 6, 2011, 4:30 pm
cynthia from clinton hill says:
I live on Clinton Ave, the garbage is 8 feet high. its amazing to see thicke packed like sausages looking garbage bags full of well garbage,im thinking omg the rats are gonna have a good time. i think its disgusting. well i hope its cleared out fast!.
Jan. 6, 2011, 11:59 pm
common sense from bay ridge says:
It maybe nitpicking, but the entire borough is a dump, like your headline states. Stating that "Brownstone Brooklyn is awash in refuse" makes it sound like it's either worse there than the rest of the borough, or more important.
Jan. 7, 2011, 1:11 am
JW from Brooklyn Heights says:
Just like the mayor to blame workers. He's the mayor; he cannot take the credit if he cannot handle the blame. He messed up the detail...if the sanitation workers soldiered, they had every right to do so. We're all suffeirng from cuts to services & infrastructure, when the wealthy could have been stand-up citizens and said, "We've profited on the backs of labor; we're willing to pay a little more in taxes if we earn over $250,000." My household earns that, and we would happily pay more taxes to get some real services. Shame on King Bloomberg--he has no clothes!
Jan. 7, 2011, 11:44 pm
The——yWaiter from Sunnyside, Queens says:
It's not any better over here n Queens either. I made a video about the garbage in my neighborhood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGdvnZNaNjE
Jan. 8, 2011, 9:30 pm
Tom Rodeheaver from Park Slope says:
I don't know why the blizzard was such a surprise to the administration. Don't they have the same radios and tv's we do? On mine there were news crawls warning of where the storm was going to hit and when. Weathermen and women were forecasting the extent of the storm at least once an hour and there were general exclaimations of the end of the world. Where was the administration? Sorry, they were out of town on vacation.
Jan. 9, 2011, 12:13 am
Julie Pohl from Park Slope says:
We in Brooklyn who haven't seen the garbage picked up are beginning to wonder why we see the salt trucks and plows out now - days after things have been cleared, and yet days before another storm is due to hit. However, we haven't seen a garbage pick up since the first storm 2 weeks ago!!! And now with another storm due to hit tomorrow, it will be weeks before the garbage gets any attention at all!! We will soon have a rat infestation due to the mountains of garbage and recycling left to pile up - Who's in charge here?
Jan. 10, 2011, 11:34 am

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