By Justin McCallum

With warmer weather approaching, the many snowbanks along Mosholu Parkland are melting to reveal not budding flowers but heaps of trash discarded over the winter months.

A walk along just ten concrete slabs of park sidewalk finds used cigarette boxes, a tomato sauce can, shattered beer bottles, motor oil and a moldy box of coffee along with paper cups. A felled “No Litter” sign lays discarded alongside debris, adding irony to a prairie that’s often treated like a wasteland. More trash lines the street, sidewalk, in the roadway and between cars.

Elizabeth Quaranta, a founding member of the Friends of Mosholu Parkland, is appalled at how her neighbors are treating their “backyard.”

“I would say this is one of the worst years I’ve ever seen in terms of trash,” Quaranta told the Norwood News. “Between the amount of snow, ice and cars constantly going in and out, folks see Mosholu as a sparse parkland; it looks like no one cares about the place.”

Trash Influx
Quaranta attributes the huge growth in debris to the harsh winter and population influx in the neighborhood.

“We’re starting to get more populated with new buildings in the area that bring in more people who come from all over,” she said. “When people take their trash out they expect city workers to take care of it. People don’t think they’re doing anything wrong putting it on the park side.”

Fellow resident Maribelle Olivieri noticed the trend of more trash appearing as the snow melted, but found this year particularly troubling with frozen obstacles preventing sanitation workers from gathering waste. “I felt bad for one guy I saw who couldn’t get over mountains of snow,” Olivieri said.

This has left many of the garbage cans in the park and along sidewalks overflowing with pungent debris.

“The trash cans themselves are horrible, I would be afraid of going near them because I’m afraid of picking up a disease,” Quaranta said. “They don’t encourage anybody to want to throw away their trash, so then people put their trash next to the can, not inside it.”

The bins along the park, which have scheduled pick-ups three times every week, are inundated with more trash than the neighborhood may even be producing, as found by Norwood resident Norma Jean Scully and the Norwood News. Scully caught on video a man dumping oversized garbage bags on the sidewalk along East Mosholu Parkway.

Some Bronxites suspect the lack of trash chutes in some buildings and disinterest in dragging trash to the basements leads people to dump full garbage bags in the street. However, this is not necessarily a localized trend as refuse from as far away as Pelham Bay has been found along the greenway, according to Scully, who found mail addressed to the east Bronx in one abandoned bag.

Taking Action
To encourage a civic response to the garbage, Quaranta has taken to handing out trash gloves, which she buys in

bulk herself, to encourage residents to help keep their neighborhood clean.

“The first thing that people tell me is ‘I’m not touching that with my hands,’ but now I’m giving you the gloves so nobody can have an excuse,” she said.

Encouraging people to pick up trash on their own time, the Friends of Mosholu Parkland also held a community clean up on Saturday, March 8. After two hours of “overwhelming” work, Quaranta said the group filled two bags with garbage using their own brooms, rakes and gloves she had been handing out.

Additionally, recognizing that the city agencies responsible for cleanup in the area –  Sanitation as well as Parks and Recreation – are reactionary, Quaranta began another social media campaign to help upset citizens voice concerns via 311.

After multiple 311 calls processed in February by Sanitation and a personal discussion between Quaranta and a Parks Manager, three residents reported Parks and Recreation employees cleaning up the park along 204th St and E. Mosholu Parkway South on the morning of March 11.

In an email to the Norwood News, Parks spokesman Nathan Arnosti said that Parks staff cleans the greenway 5-7 times each week, with Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) Officers maintaining an “active presence” along the greenbelt that links to the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden.

Those caught littering or misusing a waste receptacle by any of the 30 PEP officers covering the borough – 18 of whom were hired this year – face a fine of at least $100 that may climb upwards of $300, with dumpers slapped with a minimum $1000 fee.

“The act of littering or unlawful dumping on park property violates NYC Parks rules and regulations,” Arnosti said in an email. “Trash does not grow on trees, and we encourage all New Yorkers to properly dispose of their trash and help keep our city clean and green.”

However, a walk by the area on the afternoon of the cleaning still found copious amounts of debris – including full trash cans, bags of garbage and even a plunger – all within feet of children playing.

Pointing Fingers

When questioned as to whose job it was to clean up along the green space and surrounding streets, Arnosti said that responsibility is “not quite as simple as you’d expect, with some falling under Sanitation, the Department of Transportation or Parks.”

Betty Arce, who lives just off the parkway, was frustrated that there is such division of responsibilities between different city departments that don’t seem to communicate.

“The big issue that I have is how we break up different areas of the city to different responsibilities,” she told those at a Community Board 7 Sanitation Meeting. “I mean you can go through two blocks and pass through four different agencies.”

Kathy Dawkins, a spokeswoman for Sanitation, outlined that “debris inside or immediately outside the park comes under the Parks Department,” and later Arnosti admitted that the area fell under his department’s obligation, including the stretch between Jerome and Bainbridge Avenue where the majority of the trash has collected and remains today. However, the issue became further muddled when Sanitation Supervisor Michael Darden told the committee and residents that “when it’s on the sidewalk in front of buildings, then it’s Sanitation’s duty.”

Regardless of which department is responsible, some residents feel the issue is best serviced by the community itself, rather than relying on city agencies or elected officials.

Scully, who spotted an illegal dumper, said she doesn’t blame sanitation but neighbors for the issue. Arce found that feral cats rooting through bags of trash may be exacerbating the issue. Quaranta puts the onus on her Mosholu Parkway neighbors.

“We can do this cleanup ourselves – we shouldn’t need somebody telling us to go and clean up Mosholu Parkway,” Quaranta said. “This has to come from our own households, we all have a civic duty here.”

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.