Garbage to Compete With Snow as City Trucks Divide Duty
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The city will begin removing towers of trash, like these piles on West 112th Street in Harlem, on Monday. But half the sanitation trucks will still be clearing snow.
By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: January 2, 2011
Garbage is the new snow in New York City.
Related
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City Room: Show Us Your Trash (January 3, 2011)
Bags of trash tower on the sidewalks outside apartment buildings, while garbage cans left buried since the city’s last pickup, on Christmas Eve, poke through dirty mounds of melting snow.
New Yorkers still cursing City Hall for seldom-seen plows after the Christmas weekend snowstorm are transferring their ire to garbage trucks, which will make their first reappearances on Monday. Alternate-side parking rules will still be suspended.
But the Sanitation Department said it would resume residential garbage collection — beginning Monday at 7 a.m. — in only a “limited” fashion.
“We will have 50 percent of normal collection trucks out,” said Keith W. Mellis, a department spokesman. “We still have 50 percent of the trucks out for snow-clearing operations.”
Those who get regular Monday garbage collection, he said, should put their trash (including Christmas trees) outside, but not items to be recycled. Workers will collect the bags. Eventually.
“We will be behind,” Mr. Mellis acknowledged. “We’re going to be working on Monday’s material on Tuesday. As soon as we finish Monday’s, we’ll get to Tuesday’s.”
He added that he could not say exactly when trash would be collected because that depended on which districts needed more crews to remove snow. The lack of specifics left some city leaders fuming.
“It could mean too much garbage will end up being on our streets for too long, and the likelihood of rat and health issues arising will increase with each passing day,” City Councilman James Vacca, a Bronx Democrat, said in an e-mail. “If these problems occur, those who thought snow removal was problematic will have seen nothing yet.”
Most city residences have not had trash collected since Christmas Eve.
Councilman Vincent Ignizio, a Republican from Staten Island, said in an e-mail that the trash problem was “just the continuation of a poorly implemented snow-removal plan.”
In Astoria, Queens, several people walking on Broadway on Sunday morning registered their disgust. “All the bags are ripping open, probably from the weight of the snow and other garbage bags piled on top,” said Gretchen Strejc, 31, a chef. “It’s warming out and it’s going to start intensifying the flavor of the bags.”
Health concerns aside, there was one instance on Sunday where piles of garbage might have saved someone’s life.
Just after noon, a 26-year-old man plunged from a ninth-floor window of an apartment house on West 45th Street near Ninth Avenue, according to the police.
The man landed on his back on garbage bags. He was conscious, the police said, when he was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center. He was later reported in critical condition. The police declined to say precisely how the man fell, but said that he was not the victim of a crime or an accident.
In some parts of the city, the garbage had not accumulated to such soaring levels, and the Sanitation Department said that over the past week workers had collected trash at New York City Housing Authority projects and some large private buildings.
In Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, residents were busily clearing paths for sanitation workers. At one six-story building on Greenwood Avenue, more than 40 bags were neatly tied and arranged on the sidewalk.
“They are not going to climb over snow to get to our garbage,” said Arlene Catapano, 54, a crossing guard.
But that can-do attitude was the exception. Near Central Park North, Mohammad Taha, 26, standing outside 1295 Fifth Avenue, where bags formed a six-foot wall lining the sidewalk, was skeptical that sanitation workers would get to his building at the beginning of the week.
“It will be just like the snow,” he said. “God knows if they’re ever going to come.”
New Yorkers still cursing City Hall for seldom-seen plows after the Christmas weekend snowstorm are transferring their ire to garbage trucks, which will make their first reappearances on Monday. Alternate-side parking rules will still be suspended.
But the Sanitation Department said it would resume residential garbage collection — beginning Monday at 7 a.m. — in only a “limited” fashion.
“We will have 50 percent of normal collection trucks out,” said Keith W. Mellis, a department spokesman. “We still have 50 percent of the trucks out for snow-clearing operations.”
Those who get regular Monday garbage collection, he said, should put their trash (including Christmas trees) outside, but not items to be recycled. Workers will collect the bags. Eventually.
“We will be behind,” Mr. Mellis acknowledged. “We’re going to be working on Monday’s material on Tuesday. As soon as we finish Monday’s, we’ll get to Tuesday’s.”
He added that he could not say exactly when trash would be collected because that depended on which districts needed more crews to remove snow. The lack of specifics left some city leaders fuming.
“It could mean too much garbage will end up being on our streets for too long, and the likelihood of rat and health issues arising will increase with each passing day,” City Councilman James Vacca, a Bronx Democrat, said in an e-mail. “If these problems occur, those who thought snow removal was problematic will have seen nothing yet.”
Most city residences have not had trash collected since Christmas Eve.
Councilman Vincent Ignizio, a Republican from Staten Island, said in an e-mail that the trash problem was “just the continuation of a poorly implemented snow-removal plan.”
In Astoria, Queens, several people walking on Broadway on Sunday morning registered their disgust. “All the bags are ripping open, probably from the weight of the snow and other garbage bags piled on top,” said Gretchen Strejc, 31, a chef. “It’s warming out and it’s going to start intensifying the flavor of the bags.”
Health concerns aside, there was one instance on Sunday where piles of garbage might have saved someone’s life.
Just after noon, a 26-year-old man plunged from a ninth-floor window of an apartment house on West 45th Street near Ninth Avenue, according to the police.
The man landed on his back on garbage bags. He was conscious, the police said, when he was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center. He was later reported in critical condition. The police declined to say precisely how the man fell, but said that he was not the victim of a crime or an accident.
In some parts of the city, the garbage had not accumulated to such soaring levels, and the Sanitation Department said that over the past week workers had collected trash at New York City Housing Authority projects and some large private buildings.
In Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, residents were busily clearing paths for sanitation workers. At one six-story building on Greenwood Avenue, more than 40 bags were neatly tied and arranged on the sidewalk.
“They are not going to climb over snow to get to our garbage,” said Arlene Catapano, 54, a crossing guard.
But that can-do attitude was the exception. Near Central Park North, Mohammad Taha, 26, standing outside 1295 Fifth Avenue, where bags formed a six-foot wall lining the sidewalk, was skeptical that sanitation workers would get to his building at the beginning of the week.
“It will be just like the snow,” he said. “God knows if they’re ever going to come.”
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