Spring Sweep

What do we do on our sunny Saturdays?  Pick up beer bottles and McDonald's bags! Give me back that filet-o-fishhhhhh...

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

 I was excited to read an email from Councilman Jim Graham's Director of Constituent Services Wilson Reynolds explaining that he came out to our alley on Thursday evening, the night before trash day, to evaluate the trash situation.  He was happy to report there were no problems, such as dumped items or untied trash bags fluttering in the wind.  Unfortunately, that's because some residents decided to put their trash out on Friday night, after the Friday morning trash collection!  As I came through the alley on Friday night, two trash bags greeted me.  Not the kind of welcome I wanted after a long day.   They were the usual clear, thin bags--- all untied of course.  At least the rats and alley cats were excited about the proposition of tasty old chicken wings and pizza remnants.  As you can see from the picture, plates and pizza boxes had blown out of the trash bags and were lying at various places in the alley.   I thought households received solid waste tickets for behavior like this.

One of the members of the Parkview Beautification Crew on Saturday morning took the initiative to remove the bags, tie them, and put them in her own Supercan. Doesn't it look so much better?

Well it the alley did look better for a short time, until the same household put six additional bags of open trash out, a VCR, printer, old clothes, plus other assorted trash items.  It's so discouraging when we make an effort to clean the alley, only have to have residents, seemingly out of spite, resully the alley. 

Additionally, other items were illegally dumped on the Warder side of the alley.  This includes several trash bags, a drum stand, a food processor, a suitcase, a chalkboard, and other assorted items.  I reported the illegal dumping to the city, but we'll have to see if DPW talks to the residents of this house to determine who is responsible for this mess.

 To be continued...

Picking Up Where the City Left Off

It's no secret that many of city streets have suffered since November, when the city stopped sweeping some of them--not Georgetown and Dupont Circle of course.  As a result of the city's respite, coupled with the refusal of pedestrians to throw trash in receptacle and residents to pick up the areas outside their homes, the streets of Columbia Heights and Petworth have become an absolute mess.  It's like citizens began to throw their garbage out their front doors when the snow started coming down.
                     

Before

 

We asked the city's Green Team to come out and clean the 500-600 block of Irving, but we were met with no response.  As a result, two neighbors and myself decided to tackle 3 blocks surrounding our house, picking up 6 contractor bags FULL of trash. 

After