This Bensonhurst corridor is a dump.
Locals say their neighbors are trashing 18th Avenue, and they want the city pile on the enforcement and bring back the garbage bins it canned years ago.
“I’ve seen great days and the downfall of 18th Avenue,” said Carlo Lauricella, who owns C&L Fine Gifts. “Eighty-second Street and 18th Avenue has become a dumping ground.”
The city removed 44 garbage cans along 18th Avenue between 65th and 75th streets in 2011 to discourage people from dropping household trash in the litter bins, but neighborhood advocates say the idea was garbage.
“That’s just not a deterrent,” said Carlo Scisurra, a Bensonhurst resident and director of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. “Does it take a brain surgeon to see trash is on 18th Avenue because there are no baskets?”
The dumping isn’t just confined to household rubbish. This paper observed mattresses, construction equipment, and boxes bearing the name and address of a nearby medical facility among a heap of trash right next to a sidewalk at 18th Avenue and 82nd Street.
The doctor running the medical facility blamed the misplaced refuse on vagrants rooting through his dumpsters, but he stressed that the trash is not medical waste.
“I’ve seen people going though my dumpster,” said Dr. Gary Pearlman, who said he pays for thrice-weekly private carting from his 18th Avenue office. “There’s nothing dangerous in there. All the medical waste is kept within the office and picked up within the office.”
In response to complaints, Community Board 11 has asked the Department of Sanitation to step up enforcement.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
