Stock photo of a waste bin courtesy of Getty Images.
INDIANAPOLIS — There’s an abandoned box on the shoulder of Connection Avenue on the southeast side of Indianapolis that reads “MADE IN CHINA.” Despite its origin, that box has been dumped in the Circle City.
”I been dealing with this for over thirty years, and within the last year or so, it has just gotten horrible,” said Rick Walker, who owns a wooded tree line that marches up the edge of the road. “I’ve tried to get cameras put up. I’ve called the city, done everything possible to keep this cleaned up. I spent two weeks cleaning just my property up and bagged over sixteen trash bags full of trash.”
What did Walker get for his troubles?
“I got cited,” he said, displaying a letter from the City. “They sent me a letter and said I was gonna get fined $395 if I didn’t get my trash picked up.
“It’s not my trash.”
Another neighbor told FOX59 and CBS4 the same thing happened to her, that she was being cited from somebody else’s illegal dumping.
Republican City-County Councilor Michael-Paul Hart said he has tried to reason with the Department of Public Works and Code Enforcement on behalf of his trashed constituents.
“They continuously have to come out here and pick these things up, and they call me, and I call the city, and it’s this Groundhog’s Day effect, right?” Hart said. “What’s really frustrating is now the city is starting to send violation notices to the neighbors that live over here for people that are illegally dumping on this road just because their property just happens to line up with the road.
”I said, ‘Hey, let’s try and do the cameras, there are cameras in the other parts of the city.’ They say it makes it hard to enforce with just cameras. Let’s look at bringing the heavy trash route down this road when it comes into the neighborhood during that time of the month. They turned that down because they said Solid Waste is too busy.”
Hart looked down Connection Avenue and described what he saw dumped along the shoulder.
”It’s everything,” Hart said. “It’s tires, water heaters, softeners, it’s brush, it’s toilets, it’s clothes. You name it, it’s everything back here.”
The brush and the clothes were dumped in the middle of the pavement. Walker described what he saw.
”From mirrors to wooden desks, tires, a whole bunch of tires, people just drive down through here and throw cans out, couches, beds, you name it,” Walker said. “… A lot of this trash that is on the street today has just happened within the last week or two. We need some kind of cameras out here to catch the people to get it stopped.”
Read More: Residents in southeast Indianapolis threatened with fines, victimized by illegal