New weekend crews attack Oakland illegal dump sites, but the trash keeps coming back

The intersection of 75th Avenue and Hawley Street in Oakland is in a graffitied industrial area flanked by apartments and recreational vehicles that double as homes. Piles of trash are heaped on the sidewalk — household and industrial waste, discarded toys, clothes, shopping carts, electrical gadgets, tires, furniture, and construction debris that rain has washed onto the road. 

Under the elevated BART tracks, more garbage. 

The area magnifies the illegal dumping problem that has been plaguing Oakland for years. Last year, 18 million pounds of illegally dumped trash were collected, according to city data. For a city with a population of about 440,600 people, that’s about 41 pounds per resident.

To combat this problem, the Oakland City Council in October expanded pickup of illegally dumped trash to weekends. That month, six city workers were busy on a Saturday, picking up the dump site on Hawley Street.

“This site and all the sites they go to are where we received the most service requests from Oakland residents,” said Shamie Sahandy, a city spokesperson. “They just look at the data, identify hotspots, places where there’s frequent dumping, so that they can pick it up as efficiently as possible.”

On the same Saturday, Urban Compassion Project volunteers were 11 miles away from Hawley Street, dealing with a big pile of trash at 24th and Kirkham streets. Rotten food and empty containers spilled from busted trash bags swarmed with flies. 

It took about three hours for a crew of about 30 volunteers to clear the street, after which they took a celebratory group photo. This year, more than 1,800 volunteers helped the group conduct 51 cleanups.  

”After today, we will have cleared over a million pounds of trash,” said Lee Heward, the organization’s director of operations.

While the team has done much, the trash just keeps coming. About 500 feet from the site they cleaned up, another heap was waiting.

Oakland-born Althea Castillo lives in an encampment across from the cleared dumpsite with about a dozen other people. City officials had threatened to shut down the encampment if the street was not cleaned. So Castillo reached out to the Urban Compassion Project for help. She challenges people whenever they come to dump their waste, but there is little she can do to stop them.

“People have been doing that for years, so it’s become somewhat normal,” said Castillo, adding that with so many businesses in the area, a better waste disposal system is needed.

Sahandy said the city is aware that some unlicensed haulers are unloading trash in empty lots to avoid paying disposal fees, and that some of their customers are businesses evading fees. 

The number of businesses that have no trash service may be 1 in 6, a city report shows. Oakland requires businesses to subscribe to enough weekly trash, recycling, and compost service to match the volume of trash they generate.

Earlier this year, authorities urged residents to report illegal dumping to the 311 line. Some residents have complained of a slow response despite repeated calls.

“We can’t get to every service instantaneously,” Sahandy said. “It does sometimes take a little while for us to get to it, but we do get to it, and we really appreciate taking the time to report. It also helps us understand where the hotspots are.”

Fines for illegal dumping start at $1,000 and go up to $1,750 on the third offense, Sahandy said, but the conviction rate is low. To address this, she said the city is investing in night vision cameras that can read license plates.

“But right now, our focus is more on prevention,” she said.  

Back at 75th Avenue and Hawley Street, the garbage quickly reappeared. Two weeks after city crews spent hours cleaning up the site, the intersection was strewn with foam paddings, furniture, mattresses, used paint buckets and tires. 

Given the number of illegal dump sites in Oakland, it likely would be a while before city crews returned to clean up the latest heap.

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