July 14-20, 2005

cover story

Trash Daze

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Why budgetary constraints and lack of enforcement leave Philadelphians to grapple with refuse.

by Jenna Portnoy

Years from now, Philadelphia will look back on Live 8 weekend as a source of civic pride. Concertgoers rocked out. There were few arrests. And, within a day or two, Benjamin Franklin Parkway was pretty much clean. That last bragging point, however, is noteworthy considering the condition of some neighborhoods.

Shortly after the July 2 concert ended, the city deployed more than 100 sanitation workers to collect more than 135 tons of trash. But, their commendable efforts raise the question: Where are they the rest of the time? After all, many lots, streets and sidewalks from the Northeast to Southwest Philly are mired in muck. It's not like officials don't notice it. Go to City Hall any day of the week. There, the El station is soaked in urine and sidewalks are coated with grimy paper.

Behind Chestnut Street businesses, big brown bags wait at the curb for sanitation trucks. Some are ripped open and, as people on their way to work storm past, brown liquid oozes onto the street. On Monday mornings in Old City, it's common to see restaurant and club workers climbing out of basement storage rooms with two trash bags per hand. Each is filled with recipes gone wrong, used coffee grinds and leftovers from dinner last night, and the night before. Some make it right into waiting trucks. Others fester in the hazy sun. The streets are coated with takeout cups and cigarette butts; paper plates with melted-on pizza cheese are wedged between car tires and the curb. Later, sweepers and scrubbers employed by the Old City and Center City business improvement districts, which are funded by property taxes and managed by private-sector boards, will comb the streets, picking up litter.

Garbage and odors are nuisances on par with late trains and crowded buses. For many people, these things are all part of living in a city, of working downtown, momentary frustrations before moving through alarmed doors, past the electric hum of water coolers into air-conditioned comfort. But for others, the trash is more than an unpleasant whiff. Even though the city says it gets 97 percent of the trash on its first run, and the rest on overtime, garbage invades our lives.

Residents of Passyunk Square in South Philly have to sweep their sidewalks of debris every day. "Sometimes," says resident Christine Weeks, "I have to use a shovel."

If the local civic association can't keep the debris under control, they may take after Queen Village and hire a cleanup company to supplement the city's inadequate service. Sure, we have the Philadelphia More Beautiful program, in which 7,000 block captains and 89,000 volunteers are provided bags, shovels and rakes to organize regular cleanups from spring through fall, according to the Streets Department. But many of our neighborhoods do not benefit. At 19th and Jefferson, a grassy lot is covered in trash. Blocks between 47th and 55th on Chestnut are never free of debris even a few hours after trash pickup.

A tight budget, coupled with people's carelessness, means the city is besieged with trash-related headaches. There are not enough officers to cite people who violate curbside trash regulations. Recycling has the moneymaking potential to help, but participation is a dismal 6 percent. (An audit of the program by the city Controller's Office should be released by the end of the month.)

Flawed trash collection and rampant litter have turned the city into a massive trash heap.

Communities that have the money and resources to clean it up can make do with substandard public service.

Other places just get dumped on.

Holding Tank: City trash trucks bring garbage to transfer stations like this Tacony-area dump. Bulldozers push the trash into trailers for transport to landfills or incinerators. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"Alone, the Streets Department in the city can't keep the city clean," says department deputy commissioner Carlton Williams. "We need the community. We need people to get involved. We need people to help clean and beautify our neighborhoods."

It doesn't get much more Philly than this. Geno's is to the left and Pat's is to the right. Whiz-smeared napkins blow around Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue. As tourists' No. 1 cheesesteak destination and home of the Italian Market, residents think the city should pay closer attention to keeping this neighborhood clean.

Geoff DiMasi and his neighbors formed the Passyunk Square Civic Association a year and a half ago. They planted trees around Capitolo Park, a heavily used playground at Ninth and Federal streets. Forty-two young trees now line the sidewalk and give it a comfortable, pedestrian-friendly feel. On Friday evenings, residents pick up trash and water the trees. People are already using the space more, says DiMasi, who has lived here about five years.

"Environment really does change the way people behave," he says.

In the culturally diverse residential area — it's bound by Washington Avenue and Tasker Street, and Sixth and Broad streets — the goals of the association are not necessarily increasing property values and fostering growth.

DiMasi is a multimedia professor at the University of the Arts and his work space takes up the first floor of the home where he lives with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. The property's prior owner told them that keeping the area clean would be a lost cause but rather than quitting, they put out a planter. Today, the secluded 1100 block of Darien Street is dotted with colorful blooms.

"I plan on dying in Philadelphia, dying in my house," he says, walking around on a humid afternoon. "I'm not doing this to appreciate the value of my home. I'm doing it so I can enjoy my daily life. If I'm going to walk down to the coffee shop, I want to enjoy it."

Instead of living in a suburb where he would spend his free time maintaining a lawn, DiMasi would rather work to make the community better and form connections with neighbors who may or may not be like him. People talk of city living as isolating, but DiMasi says it's just the opposite. That's why a well-maintained green space, for example, is important. It gives children, like his daughter, a place to interact socially with other kids. Efforts to keep trash cans on the sidewalk are tricky, too, because the community group has to sign a contract with the city promising to line it and empty it themselves. Inevitably, people use the cans as a dumping site for household trash, a violation which explains why there are so few.

"I love the culture of Philadelphia, the local culture, neighborhood, community," DiMasi says. "That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be dirty."

Weeks, the Ellsworth trash shoveler, has lived in Fishtown, Old City and Bella Vista but says, "South Philly kind of wins in terms of trash." She even claims Pittsburgh is "remarkably cleaner than Philadelphia."

She adds, "For whatever reason in Philadelphia, it's sort of overlooked. People accept the level of trash."

Despite their efforts, the Passyunk Square Civic Association will probably have to hire a private company to do spot cleaning once a week. This, even though they think the money should be used for something more than basic services, like air conditioners for senior citizens or other amenities to maintain the integrity of the community. "But, we can't work on things like that when there's 6 inches of trash on every corner," Weeks says.

Two years ago, the rich got cleaner when the Queen Village Neighbors Association got a $25,000 state grant to hire a company to sweep the north and south streets Mondays. The grant hasn't been renewed this year so the association is thinking of renegotiating their contract with LRC Services.

Not every neighborhood, however, can pony up the cash to pay for private collection.

Take Hunting Park and Kensington, neighborhoods which are casualties of a system that ignores places that aren't already sparkling and new. At least that's what Emilio Vazquez, a 37-year-old Parking Authority ticket writer and "concerned community leader" who often recruits neighbors to clean up empty lots and streets near North Eighth Street, thinks.

"We just go in and attack it," he says. Compared to grassroots movements like his, he says, the city's Philadelphia More Beautiful program does little to combat litter. "Why can't [the city] do better in North Philly? Because it's North Philly? Because it's the Badlands, as they call it?"

Vasquez's neighborhood may not get the worst of it, though.

Squashing Litter Bugs: Members of the Passyunk Square Civic Association pick up trash in and around Capitolo Park. Photo By: Manuel Dominguez Jr

The city picks up 787,000 tons of trash a year, and all that waste has to go somewhere. Just last month, City Council voted to send 12 percent of it to a waste-to-steam plant in Chester. There was no public discussion about Chester residents' documented respiratory problems that are exacerbated by dozens of waste disposal and processing facilities close to homes. The American Ref-Fuel plant simply submitted a bid that the city could afford.

The Rev. Horace Strand, 50, describes his Chester childhood as idyllic. He played baseball and basketball "and life was simple." When a trash incinerator and other plants were being built, he was busy running a church. Two years ago, Faith Holy Temple Church and Christian School, founded in 1979, moved into a beige brick building that used to be Chocolate City nightclub. The lot out back was known for drug dealing.

About 10 years ago, Strand started to pay attention to the more than 30 waste disposal and petrochemical facilities directly across the street from Chester's poor West End. A city landmark for nearly a half century, the "What Chester Makes Makes Chester" sign atop a PECO substation had long since come down. The slogan seemed to mock the people who came to Strand with maladies, ranging from trouble breathing and fatigue to asthma and bronchitis. Trucks rumbled by starting early in the morning. They came all day, leaving a fine dust that covered everything for blocks. He's since lobbied for better conditions for those whose health problems have been exacerbated by the air pollution. "We're trying to force the company to deal with the ongoing problems in this community before [Philadelphia] commits to expanding this company's profit base," says Strand, who pleaded with Philadelphia City Council to rethink the trash plan.

The Ref-Fuel contract means 350 tons per day, or 91 tons a year, will be trucked to Chester from the Northwest Transfer Station in Roxborough. A transfer station is a large pad where trucks drop garbage before it is taken to a landfill or incinerator. The Roxborough dump serves residents of Chestnut Hill, Germantown, Manayunk, Mt. Airy and Roxborough, says Maurice Sampson of Philadelphia's Solid Waste Advisory Committee.

"You have one of the most socially concerned neighborhoods in the country depositing their trash on one of the worst areas in the country for environmental justice," says Sampson, a Mt. Airy resident who served as the city's first recycling coordinator under Mayor Wilson Goode.

City Councilman David Cohen attempted to postpone the vote, but failed. "It's a matter of choice and Philadelphia is choosing to ally itself with the worse forces," Cohen said at the June 9 meeting. "We're just as bad as any other rich group that doesn't care about poor people."

The vote approved a $339 million, seven-year plan that also parceled out 37 percent of trash to Waste Management, 44 percent to BFI Waste Services and 7 percent to Republic Services. City trucks hand the trash off to these companies who bring it to landfills or incinerators. Curbside trash ends up in York County's Modern Landfill and, in Bucks County, the Conestoga, GROWS and Tullytown landfills and the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy plant.

Each day, Ref-Fuel processes up to 2,688 tons of municipal and commercial waste, a number that did not change once the city contract started July 1. Trash is burned in a large vessel lined with water tubes. The heating value of the garbage turns the water into steam, which moves a turbine and creates electricity, says plant business manager Tom Seidenberger. A computer hooked up to the stacks monitors emissions, DEP Southeast Region spokeswoman Lynda Rebarchak says. Between 2002 and 2004, the company paid a total of $100,000 in fines. The money goes directly to care for children with asthma, she says. Although Rebarchak stops short of saying Ref-Fuel emissions caused the breathing problems, she says pollution can exacerbate health problems.

John Turner, 49, puffs on a cigarette outside his Highland Street home. "Where else they taking it? They ain't taking it to Bryn Mawr. They ain't taking it to Malvern," he says. Turner doesn't like the dust in the air. It settles on everything and forms a film on the cars overnight, he says.

One street over, John Dobnack, 48, surveys his front porch and siding. "They say it's safe ash, but you have to wonder," he says. A contractor friend told him it disintegrates roofs. But it's unlikely he and his wife, Iris, will leave anytime soon. "You want to but what are you going to get for a house?"

Advocates say Philadelphia's trash could go elsewhere. Or the city could turn more of it into revenue through recycling. But the Streets Department has hurdles of its own to deal with when it comes to collection.

On a muggy weekday morning, Robin Kane heaves cans of trash into a compactor and talks about the hardest part of spending seven years as a trash collector.

"You got the snow, you got the heat. Picking the trash up, you got the maggots. But it's the people," she says, wiping her sweat-soaked blond bangs with her forearm. "Sometimes you have really, really nice people. Sometimes you have really, really ignorant people."

There are people that call them lazy and drunks for no reason.

The job pays $26,000 and applicants must pass a drug test and physical.

"You can't be weak and do this job," Kane says, as the compactor crushes and pops the bags, forcing out puffs of putrid air and streams of dingy liquids. She and Sandra Young, who threw trash like a pro on her first day a few weeks ago, are both single mothers. Kane has thrown her back out and gotten nicked with a syringe."

You don't really know what you'll get stabbed with," she says. "You have people throwing out feces even."

Although she has never uncovered a human body, the dead animals stay right where she finds them. One working condition shocked her at first.

"They pulled horses off the street before they pulled us during a heat wave," she says. "Nobody gives us credit. We're nobody." Kane tugs on her partner's shoulder to alert her to a car speeding past the truck. They turn back to the cans and opt to collect the trash even though it violates curbside rules. One can has 6 inches of soil in the bottom and some are crammed with branches that are tough to shake out into the truck. Other cans are topped with loose trash that falls to the ground as they dump them over into the compactor.

Ashes to Ashes: John Dobnack wonders if ash from the nearby waste-to-energy plant makes the air unsafe to breath. It coats all the surfaces in his Chester home. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

At the end of their morning route, Kane and Young's haul totaled nearly nine tons not including some stuff they had to leave behind like discarded construction materials and loose garbage that fell out of bags ripped open overnight. Trucks must collect at least 8 tons before dropping it at a transfer station. Each household can put out 240 pounds of trash a week with each bag or can weighing no more than 40 pounds. Exceeding these limits, as some people do, adds to the mess that covers city streets.

"It's an honest living, but you don't understand how people overload the trash," Kane says. "They don't go by the rules and then you got people who do contracting work. They say, "You have to take this.' No, we don't have to take it."

Businesses must hire private hauling companies if they exceed household trash limits. The city says it eliminated the last instance of twice-a-week collection in North Philadelphia earlier this year to cut costs. (The area included Mayor Street's Yorktown neighborhood.) For daytime collection, trash must be set out between 7 p.m. the night before collection day and 7 a.m. the day of collection. For evening collection, trash must be set out between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. on collection day. Not everyone follows these rules. When businesses and residents put out too much trash or put it out too early, it makes the city's job more difficult. Pieces of debris get left behind and pretty soon the neighborhood turns into a place where it looks OK to litter.

That's where SWEEP (Streets & Walkways Education and Enforcement Program) officers are supposed to come in. It's their job to enforce the rules and impose warnings or fines starting at $25. Thirty-five officers monitor trash for the entire city with five focusing on commercial building violations including recycling. Officers' efforts to fine households who do not recycle have been "shelved for a moment" in favor of more serious infractions such as illegal dumping and public health and safety concerns, says recycling program director David Robinson.

"After all these years, there are still many residents who are lifelong Philly residents who don't recycle. It's just a matter of priority, clearly," Robinson says. "I don't want to blame people, but the program's been around for 18 years. Convenience is a huge factor. It can't be a burden."

Without the accountability factor, residents feel there's little incentive to separate their trash for recycling, he says. Those who decide to make the effort can put out glass bottles and metal and aluminum cans in labeled containers. Paper, including newspaper, junk mail, magazines and other fibers, should be bundled or put in a paper bag. The city is looking into simplifying the dual-stream approach now that technology can handle a single stream. Chestnut Hill and West Oak Lane households are participating in a trial program where residents put all recyclables in one cart. Residents earn store coupons as motivation to participate.

The city is in its last year of a contract with Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., a Chicago-based company that subcontracts with Blue Mountain Recycling to turn the city's recyclables into cash. The total sanitation budget is about $93 million and last year, 47,300 tons of recyclables earned the city $1.2 million. Robinson acknowledges room for improvement. "Yes there's money that can be saved," he says. "Yes, there's more we can do with the program. We're going to continue to find ways to tweak and give the best possible service to the residents out there."

The recycling program has fallen short of its 35 to 40 percent participation rate goal, says deputy city controller Tony Radwanski. The yet released, three-month-long audit looked at the program's shortcomings and revenue potential.

Additional revenue would go back into the budget and lessen the city's need for cuts.

The city says it needs more people like Amy Rivera of the Queen Village Neighbors Association. She runs a plastics and cardboard recycling drop-off point Saturday mornings at Washington Avenue under Interstate 95. Last month, the site collected 600 pounds of plastic. Similar Partnership Recycling Programs throughout the city give residents a place to bring recyclables that the city can't pick up curbside.

"They need to better educate Philadelphians in general," Rivera says. "I know it's a law that you have to recycle bottles and cans but I don't think it's enforced very well. If people were better-educated I think they would have better success with the collection."

In addition to the recycling mascot, Curby Bucket, and posters showing a SWEEP officer with the words "Recycle. Don't Litter. It's the Law," the city just wrapped up a six-month-long campaign called Recycling Pays aimed at low-participation areas in North and West Philly, Robinson says. "We know the recipe that works and it's part enforcement, part incentive, part convenience and part education," he says. "You have to keep in people's faces with it. Especially in big cities you have to break through the clutter."

Still, West Philadelphia resident Susie Turpening sees vast differences from neighborhood to neighborhood. Growing up in Minnesota, "one of the cleaner parts of the country," she was disappointed to find truth in the "Filthadelphia" moniker. "Near the University City District they have people walking up and down streets with their little brooms. You go to other areas not too far away that don't get that kind of service," she says.

Until the city finds a way to provide equal service, the streets will stay dirty and a cleanup effort equal to the one accomplished for Live 8 will only happen once every 20 years. The city needs to pull its act together for daily collection, but it can't do so without help from its residents.