Bay Ridge street corners piled with refuse from overflowing bins are the latest garbage gripe in a nabe with more than its share of trashy tribulations.
“It’s ridiculous, you see it on every corner,” said lifelong Ridge resident Michele Tvedt. “Four corners, four huge piles of garbage.”
Community Board 10 gets up to a dozen complaints a week about overloaded street bins, according to the district manager, but she said part of the problem is people using trash cans as their own personal landfill, dumping bags stuffed with household garbage.
“A lot of the baskets overflow, not so much because they’re filled with coffee cups and loose rubbish from people passing by,” said Josephine Beckmann. “It’s really from people placing bags and other large items that fill up rather quickly in the corner baskets.”
Councilman Vincent Gentile (D–Bay Ridge) is trying to help, by increasing the discretionary funding he’s dedicating to additional trash-bin pickups in the neighborhood.
Gentile is earmarking $180,000 this year — up from $153,000 last year — to add an additional day of extra pickups on busy commercial corridors. Corner-bin pickup will increase to six days a week — Monday through Saturday — along Third Avenue between 69th and 88th streets, Fifth Avenue from 65th to 86th streets, 13th Avenue from 65th to 86th streets, and 18th Avenue between 68th and 86th streets, according to Gentile’s budget director, Paul Casali.
The funding allocation, which is part of the NYC Cleanup Initiative, also bankrolls a mechanical broom to clean streets in the district each week. An additional $20,000 will go to the Wildcat Service Corporation, which does work such as sweeping, cleaning sewer grates, eliminating graffiti, and shoveling snow from properties for the elderly and disabled.
“This upgrade in service will provide the councilmember’s constituents with better-than-ever sanitation service,” Gentile’s spokeperson, Matthew Kazlowski, said.
But unsightly trash piles around overflowing rubbish bins are just one of the garbage grievances afflicting Bay Ridge.
Ridgites are also dealing with rare-to-nonexistent bulk pickups since the Department of Sanitation rolled out the new “dual bin trucks” with separate, smaller compartments for regular trash and organics, leading workers to leave behind large items for lack of room.
Beckmann said that oversized items such as office chairs, bookshelves, or sofas often linger on the curb for a week or more. She said the problem was particularly noticeable along Fifth Avenue in the 80s, Third Avenue in the 70s, and more generally along 13th Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway — some of the same areas getting the added corner-bin pickups.
Also, residents of four private streets in Bay Ridge are suing the city over its sudden demand earlier this year that they start lugging their household garbage to the nearest public street for pickup.
