Aliyya Swaby Photo
Dixwell’s “ambassadors” at work last summer.
Bombero in WNHH’s studio.
New Haven’s whittled-down parks crews are doing their best to keep up with wrappers, cigarette butts, and other litter. But they can’t do it without citizens changing their ways.
St. Petersburg, Florida, is making a similar appeal to its citizens to combat increased littering, most visible at beachfront tourist sites.
New Haven parks, recreation and trees chief Rebecca Bombero and St. Petersburg “mayoral action” chief David Flintom shared their strategies Wednesday during an episode of “SeeClickFix Radio” on WNHH.
The discussion grew out of citizen complaints that each official has handled recently.
It started with a passionate April 1 SeeClickFix post about New Haven’s waterfront.
A SeeClickFixer’s photo from Long Wharf.
“I walk the Long Wharf Promenade/Nature Preserve almost every day. The litter is out of control,” the post began. “I was curious if anyone from the City or the Land Trust is responsible for cleaning. I really think the City needs to provide more trash receptacles, although I really don’t think that will help. Police need to monitor for littering fines when they can. Can the food trucks be held responsible for cleaning up the mess that blows into the land areas around the sound from their customers. It is disgusting and an eyesore. It starts around Lenny & Joes and goes all the way down to the Veterans Memorial. You cannot see it from the road as most of it gets trapped in the rock ledge and seagrass. Empty booze bottles, broken glass, dirty diapers, makeshift homeless people sleeping areas in the seagrass out of crushed cardboard, oodles of paper plates, stryofoam to-go containers, plastic bags from the taco trucks. There needs to be more, easy-to-access, lidless trash receptacles placed around the parking areas to promote tossing garbage — ALL of the parking areas from the pier down to the Veterans Memorial. DEEP should be involved as this is not healthy for the Sound or the storm drains. I have several pictures I can share, but am only able to upload one.”
Other posters on the citizen-powered website joined in with anecdotes and photos of trash at the park.
“We do have staff assigned to stop to poke trash there daily, but as you stated, the amount of litter is out of control and it is difficult to keep up with our limited resources,” Bombero responded on SeeClickFix. “We are working with other departments in the city on a multi-pronged approach.”
She elaborated on that approach during her WNHH radio appearance. Her department’s crews do visit the parks regularly to pick up trash, she said. But her overall staff has dwindled from 103 to 53 since 2003. And no matter how many laborers pick up trash, the biggest answer lies in “educating” citizens not to litter in the first place, she argued.
In her observation, littering has increased in town in recent years. Teens today haven’t grown up watching public-service TV commercials about Native Americans tearing up as speeding passengers foul the landscape with tossed trash.
“It’s like throwing sand into the wind sometimes,” she said of clean-up efforts.
“Kids haven’t received that anti-littering message,” Bombero said. “Where there’s no litter, you see changes in behavior,” with people overall respecting parks and public spaces more.
Contributed Photo
Public works preps teens for this summer’s “clean city” drive.
She said the city is working on delivering the message through neighborhood-based clean-up campaigns. The Harp administration is rolling out a citywide “clean city initiative” this weekend, building on efforts neighbors carried out last summer with city public works and parks staffers last summer in parts of town. Also, some neighborhoods have hired teens for summer jobs as trash-battling “ambassadors.”
“This is a national trend,” Bombero said of increased littering. “We’re trying to modify that behavior.”
Enforcing anti-littering laws is a challenge —unless you catch people in the act —but the city can still take steps, Bombero said. She noted that the building department has increased enforcement of rules requiring Long Wharf food vendors to providing trash receptacles for their customers.
“Littering is a constant problem down here in St. Petersburg,” echoed Flintom. In addition to cleaning up as much as it can, his government is also focusing on public education. “We have tried a grassroots approach,” he said: Staffers visit neighborhood meetings with handouts about using SeeClickFix to report problems. It hands out magnets with phone numbers of city departments at citywide Council of Neighborhood Associations meetings. Over the summer city staffers visit parks where student programs take place to target the anti-littering message to teens.
Both officials have also recently dealt with complaints in their cities about people trying to find lost dogs or locate the owners of lost dogs they’ve encountered. In both cities, it turns out, officials are urging citizens to implant microchips under their pets’ skin. Then the local animal shelter can learn the identity of a lost dog’s owner.
Bombero knew about this firsthand. She adopted a pit terrier from New Haven’s shelter. That dog already had an implanted chip; the shelter staff located the owner, who didn’t want the dog back. Thanks to the chip, the staff knew the dog’s name: Justin Bieber. Bombero agreed to adopt the dog, but insisted on a new name. She chose “Parker.”
Click on or download the above sound file to hear the full episdoe of “SeeClickFix Radio,” which also covered the handling of bees’ nests, unmowed grass, and mosquito control.