PERTH GARBAGE SPIES?

City Mulls Dumping Surveillance Effort

(Reprinted from Amboy Beacon, Aug. 25, 2010) PERTH AMBOY — City officials are considering instituting new regulations to control illegal dumping that would include surveillance, monitoring and tracking of garbage-collection with the goal of decreasing Perth Amboy’s disposal numbers and increasing its recycling efforts. Research conducted by City Law Director Mark Blunda’s associate Neha Patel regarding Sanitation Ordinance changes came-up with some startling findings about local attitudes toward garbage-collection. City residents are “often unaware that what they’re doing is illegal,”  Patel told City Council members during their last Caucus session. On separate occasions before the meeting, both Councilman Fernando Gonzalez and Mayor Wilda Diaz rode with sanitation workers to see first-hand some of the problems faced-by them. Councilman Kenneth Gonzalez also was scheduled to go-out on a garbagetruck.
Patel suggested that what is essential to bring garbage costs under-control is a comprehensive educational program to show residents that what they are doing will keep their taxes higher than they would be otherwise while also contributing to a lower standard-of-life. “What’s vitally-needed is an outreach program to citizens educating them on the problems of illegal dumping,” she said. Patel said that specific “hot-spots” for illegal dumping have been identified by her that should be given “special surveillance” to begin to break the habits that lead to unlawful acts taking-place on a regular basis. The use of “volunteer citizens cuts-down on the cost” of such efforts, she said. “Enforcement of the Ordinance would result in a misdemeanor offense, plus there could be an impound and forfeiture of any cars involved in illegal dumping,” Patel told the Council. “These would be handled through administrative hearings that would be appealable to the courts.” Other proposals she made included the collection of bulk-items through “a fee system that could be the imposition of a flat fee for four items in any on e pickup, or a sticker system with fees collected by color-coded stickers identifying types of items, charged depending-on collection-costs involved.” Patel suggested that the city might want to limit the number of “special collections” per year per address — perhaps, to two or three each year — and hold one yearly amnesty or FREE day, maybe calling it “Citizens Cleanup Day.” At a Special Meeting of the Council which was held at the Training Room at Fire Department Headquarters, New Brunswick Avenue, in late July, Public Works Director Paul Wnek joked about Perth Amboy’s garbage-trucks arriving at the Edgeboro Landfill, East Brunswick, and their drivers being asked, “How-many cities are you collecting?” But Wnek agreed that the massive quantities of garbage, trash and debris consistently-collected by the Sanitation Division are no joking matter. At that meeting, he took this issue so-seriously that he, too, proposed sending-out “sanitation inspection crews” to enforce how disposables are set-out for collection through existing and new fines and regulations. Wnek and Supervisor Eddie Perez participated in a discussion of possible changes to Perth Amboy’s Sanitation Ordinance at a that meeting which followed a closed-to-the-public tour of the city’s $89 million Pulic Safety/Municipal Court/Community Center Complex, New Brunswick and Amboy Avenues led by Joseph Nigro, Project Supervisor for Imperial Construction Group Inc., Elizabeth. Wnek showed officials photographs of massive apartment-complex collections, many of the city’s 300 street-baskets overflowing less than one hour after they were emptied, various bulk-item collections. and opened bags displaying construction-material being thrown-out as trash. “We have around 58 full-time employees daily out of a total of 72, and we’re getting a lot of work done,” he said. “But one of the changes we really-need is to require a list of what’s on a ‘special pickup’ so we don’t get the neighbors piling their stuff on-top-of that.” Wnek also said that he believes “some absentee-landlords with properties in other cities are bringing-in stuff at-night from properties they own in other cities where they’d have to pay.” Some pickups involve “a half-a-block of plastic bags piled six- to eight-feet-tall,” he said. “It’s just-not-normal what’s out-there.” Wnek said the average Perth Amboy home generates “2,000 pounds of garbage and 750 pounds of recyclables” when it should be in reverse-order. Perez said there have been 40 incidents of injuries to sanitation-workers since January 2009 because of the materials being put-out with regular garbage, further-reducing the number of available employees. “I’ve even suggested putting-out six-yard dumpsters so people can bring the stuff from their houses to put it in the dumpsters,” he said.