Taking Out The Garbage

"It's an isolated place and a lot of trash is dumped here," said Loren Waggy, who lives on Linden Road, just south of Chippewa Avenue.

"We found an electric organ, we found furniture," Waggy said, "We've even found firearms."

Waggy and his family do their best keeping their yard clear of trash, but pickup is a constant battle.

"The minute you clean it up people start dumping again," said Deanna Waggy, Loren's wife.

Just north of the Waggy's, on Gertrude Street, the trash gets much worse and much bigger. That is despite the "No Dumping" signs, and people continue to use the streets and abandoned buildings as their personal dumps. The result is a horrible stench and piles of junk.

Even though crews were out there cleaning up Wednesday, they weren't prepared for the amount of trash and have to go back Thursday to finish. For now, the city has made a pile of the debris it has found on the streets and on the old Scrap Management Corporation grounds to pick up later.

"This is one of those areas that you can only do so much," said South Bend Solid Waste Manager Andre Price. "The owners have put barricades up there, (strung) metal wire across...as a gate, (installed) a camera."

On the old scrapyard grounds, gates, locks and cameras don't matter. Illegal dumpers have disabled the camera and torn down the gate with the lock still attached.

"I know the city is trying to keep up with it, they do really well when they do come out here, but it's just, they can't keep up with it," said Paula Fisette, a resident of the area.

South Bend Code Enforcement said the city did get a little behind on cleaning up the trash in that area because the Department of Solid Waste has been busy cleaning up storm debris from all of the large storms that rolled through in June.

Price says Code Enforcement does look through the trash for letters and other things that could lead them back to the people who are breaking the law.