Mountain of Garbage at Clark and Hicks Streets in Brooklyn Heights

By on July 15, 2012 2:07 pm in Environment

At about 11:30 a.m. Sunday, we spotted this mountain of garbage surrounding the mailbox on the southwest corner of Hicks and Clark Streets. Another passerby was already on the phone with 311 to report the pileup which was made up of some household items and mattresses.

What happened? Someone moved and just got tired of putting garbage in the right place?

On another note, all public garbage cans along Hicks towards Joralemon (we were on our way to Pier 6) were also overflowing with trash.

Photo: Mrs. Fink

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  • http://inklake.typepad.com Peter

    I’ve made complaints to 311 and Assemblywoman Millman’s office. Since they went to picking-up only 3x a week, this has become a chronic issue.

    And you know what Sanitation’s solution is? Remove the garbage cans.

  • lois

    WE NEED MORE FREQUENT PICKUPS IN AN AREA THAT IS VISITED BY SO MANY TOURISTS AND OTHER VISITORS. (instead of cutting down on the number of pickups.)

  • WillowSt.Neighbor

    A few days ago I spotted a couple trying to fit their household garbage into the trash can at the corner of Pierrepont and Hicks Street. The can was already filled to overflowing so they moved on with their trash to find another can.

  • fast_walker

    I have recently moved back to BH after several years in London and I can’t believe how dirty NYC is. What is even more amazing is that BH doesn’t have the population density of Manhattan and it is still dirty. And let’s stop blaming the mafia and sanitation department – just yesterday I was walking down Henry street and this seemingly polite man just dropped his pizza plate on the sidewalk and didn’t think anything of it! The city needs to start dealing with the litter problem the way they are dealing with smoking and illeagal parking. I was very glad to see a taxi commercial to that effect and hope the war on litter is near.

  • Josh G

    I live across from this.. I’ve never seen anything like it. Yes the trash cans can be full but this particular case has gotta be the result of one person.

  • BH’er

    I’ve noticed similar situations around recently – just a couple days ago, curbside trash bags had been torn wide open and contents strewn scross the sidewalk on Pierrepont near Willow

    The trash cans at Pierrepont and Hicks are Always overflowing

    The tides of people driving and walking to/from the promenade wash in with trash and seem to leave it (most often) in or near a trash can, but everyday there seems to be more and more collecting in bushes and stairways to people’s front doors

    The visitors don’t have very much regard for the cleanliness of the neighborhood, but, even if they did, there are too few trash cans – and the ones we have are full anyway

    This shouldn’t be our burden to bear – and vendors only make it worse

  • Jorale-man

    @fast_walker I’ve been over to London a couple times in recent years and have noticed how much cleaner it is, and how disgusting NYC looks upon returning.

    I often wonder why the trash issue seems to exist so low on the city government’s priorities list. My guess is that there’s little political payoff in keeping the streets cleaner, whereas other quality of life issues generate bigger news headlines and translate into votes/donations.

    Nevertheless, frequency of garbage pickups has to be a bigger priority than it is.

  • User1

    One big reason streets are cleaner in London(and many other parts of Europe) is that the citizens are accustomed to produce less trash and of course not to litter. Just my two cents/pence

  • hicksanthrope

    I was hoping our neighbor finally kicked her loser boyfriend out and it was all nice stuff in the garbage. No such luck.

  • lise

    The trash on that corner was left during the night between Friday evening and Saturday morning by someone from 129 Hicks St. Lots of mail in the trash from that address. Shame on them.

  • http://Trash elemengee

    Can someone explain why it is necessary to dump household garbage in the public trash cans. Don’t all multiple dwellings have to supply adequate garbage cans for its residents. Even if the dwelling’s garbage cans are full, why do residents think it’s OK to add garbage to overflowing public trash cans. As other observers have noted, the public trash baskets along Hicks Street from the north Heights to Montague Street are often overflowing with household garbage. This garbage cannot be blamed solely on visitors as I have seen locals dropping bags of garbage that were carried from local residences. The overflowing trash cans, sometimes with garage strewn around the trash cans, make our neighborhood look like the slums. Please stop whoever you are.

  • AmyinBH

    elemengee, I once rented an apartment in Park Slope over a business. The owner of the building did not provide any trash bins for the four apartments. We were on our own for trash disposal. There also wasn’t a certificate of occupancy. Since I was young and didn’t know better I just put up with it for the year.

  • pizaro

    I doubt this is a major contributor but a lot of AirBnb/craigslist apartment rentals can also add to this. There’s at least 40 listings on AirBnb for BH. Visitors in these illegal rentals don’t know how our garbage system works and usually just put trash on the curb or in bins at the corner. Since the owners are largely absentee, there isnt much oversight.

  • hicks st guy

    as long as people feel they must be eating constantly, drinking constantly, there will be a garbage problem. and an obesity problem.

  • someone

    I actually walked by there early in the morning and it was all stacked nicely. However, some guy was just in the process of ripping all the bags open at that time.

  • Make it

    It is not just Brooklyn, Forest Hills along Queens Blvd is the same-overflowing cans on every corner.

  • GoNets

    Does anyone know what happened to the trashcans that used to sit on the corner of Pierrepont and Henry?

  • Josh G

    @hicksanthrope – I like your user name! Very appropriate.

  • http://inklake.typepad.com Peter

    GoNets,
    They were removed, from what I am told, at the request of the Brooklyn Heights Association – presumably because they were over-flowing.

    Why were they overflowing? Because pickups have been reduced to only 3 days per week (Mon-Wed-Fri).

    So the solution to overflowing trashcans? Wait for it… take away the trashcans.

  • Jorale-man

    Last year they added a second trash can to the corner of Joralemon and Clinton and it seemed to work for a while at least. The trash didn’t just get tossed on the ground next to the one preexisting can. But pedestrian traffic has increased with the popularity of Pier 6, and I suspect more and more people need to get rid of their rubbish on the way to the Borough Hall station now.

  • Joe

    On the way to Key Food, saw a lady cleaning up her ice cream covered tot with napkins on corner of montague and hicks. When I came back to the corner, saw that she left a pile of tissues right there on the sidewalk when a trash can wasn’t that far away. I’m just simply amazed by people’s behavior.

  • BH’er

    I think I might start dropping trash at every street corner until trash cans appear…

  • http://inklake.typepad.com Peter

    I urge everyone to do the following:

    contact Councilman Levin’s office:718-875-5200

    contact Assemblywoman Millman’s office: 718-246-4889

    Call 311.

  • GoNets

    One more thing: How about the thousands of cigarette butts on love lane beside CVS? Seems as though CVS employees are out there on smoke breaks and tossing their butts on the ground. It is disgusting. They should put one of those smoker genie’s outside. And a garbage can!

  • David on Middagh

    _someone_ wrote: “I actually walked by there early in the morning and it was all stacked nicely. However, some guy was just in the process of ripping all the bags open at that time.”

    It’s okay to say, “Please don’t tear the bags. It makes a mess.”

    I know that our thrift shop has a continual problem with rubbish containment; all it takes is one careless treasure-picker. Believe me, they’re used to being told to reseal the bags.

  • Chris

    Speaking of which…I have constant arguments with the super in my building over trash pickers. He claims the building keeps getting tickets. I have personally caught 2 or 3 people digging through the trash and tossing it all over the place. I know they are grabbing recyclables out of the blue bin….but they go through the rest of it it too – ripping open each individual bag that goes into the big trash bin! When I catch them I chase ’em off. But I try to explain to the super that its not reasonable to think that the people in the building randomly get together and said ‘we should all throw our trash all over the stoop today!’ I keep telling him to stop yelling at us, we’re not the problem! I clean it up when I see it. At least I try to. I actually buy contractor bags and take my crap to the curb myself on trash days but if the Sanit cops drive by, they send a violation. Is there some way to get them to stop issuing these tickets? Should the landlord add a lock to the bin structure? I know the super doesn’t like that idea.

    But still wtf? Grab the bag of recyclables and move on. NY has a deposit on pretty much everything! Leaving trash everywhere invites bugs and rodents. I just don’t get why people do this.

  • Knight

    Chris: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. If people keep rummaging through the non-recyclable bags, they must be finding enough “treasure” to continue to make the effort worth their while.