Agrees With Recent Times Editorial
While voicing agreement with a recent Times Newsweekly editorial, a local legislator called on the Sanitation Department to do something about trash problems along Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood.
In a letter sent to Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia last Friday, Aug. 15, Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan stated she supported recommendations made in this paper’s July 21 editorial, which urged the Sanitation Department to return public waste baskets removed last year from Fresh Pond Road while also increasing pickups and enforcement to stop illegal dumping.
“The editorial lays out several ways the department can help improve the quality of life for all Ridgewood residents,” Nolan wrote to Garcia, going on to note, “I support and strongly endorse this editorial and would urge the Department of Sanitation to look into all of these possibilities to help alleviate this problem.”
“Ridgewood residents deserve the same treatment and respect as any other neighborhood in our great city,” Nolan added.
The legislator also repeated her calls for adding businesses on Fresh Pond Road to the Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District (BID), which offers various services including supplemental sanitation collection. Nolan pitched the idea in a letter last October to the city’s then- Small Business Services Commissioner Robert Walsh.
“This arrangement would benefit all parties including businesses, customers and, most importantly, the residents who reside in Ridgewood,” Nolan told Garcia in last Friday’s letter. “The extension of the BID would allow businesses on Fresh Pond Road to expand garbage collection services which would lead to cleaner streets.”
Last year, the Sanitation Department removed public waste baskets from many Fresh Pond Road intersections in Ridgewood amid abuse from local residents and business owners who illegally deposited their household or commercial garbage. Since then, as repeatedly documented in the Times Newsweekly, dumpers regularly leave trash on corners where the cans were once placed or lying next to nearby streetlights, mailboxes and newspaper containers.
The site of a large trash heap observed last month near the Fresh Pond Road subway station entrance spurred the most recent Times Newsweekly editorial, which recommended that the Sanitation Department restore the waste baskets to Fresh Pond Road; the City Council explore legislation to install cameras near frequent dumping sites; and enhanced enforcement to punish those who contribute to the illegal dumping problems.
