City hopes to add people, shift strategy, to clean up illegal dumping

With reports of illegal dumping more than doubling from 2014 to 2015, Seattle Public Utilities is adding temporary staff and considering adding more contractors to clean up the mess.

Ken Snipes, the Seattle Public Utilities deputy director of solid waste and recycling, said they reassigned one of their staff members two weeks ago, to help sort out the backlog of requests.

That person helps to eliminate duplicated calls on the same sites, which accounts for about 25 percent of the requests.

Right now, each time a request comes in, one of two SPU inspectors will go to the site to see what’s going on. Then, a Department of Corrections work crew will go pick it up.

For the most part, Snipes said it has been done on a first-call-first-served basis, with the work crew often clumping requests together that are located in the same area. Crews are also supposed to pick up illegally dumped items that they spot, even if they weren’t reported.

But with more than 11,500 complaints in 2015, compared to about 5,000 complaints in 2014, Snipes said they have to look at better ways to approach the pick-ups.

Snipes said, “What we’re looking at doing now, is adding a little more structure, so that we can identify areas where there’s a higher frequency.”

He said they had entertained the idea of having routes that crews serve routinely, but the Department of Corrections told him that would not be ideal for them.

Snipes said he may also consider developing more contracts with other groups, in addition to the D.O.C. crews.

Instead, people are dumping illegally without any consequences.

The department said they had not cited anyone in 2015 and moved away from issuing citations several years ago. It was determined not feasible, since inspectors would have to witness illegal dumping in action in order to cite someone.

Jeff Miller said someone left 300 to 400 pounds of concrete in an alley behind his house Tuesday.

“That’s really inappropriate. That’s unfortunate that it gets dumped on the residents, and then we’re left to have our alley blocked or look at the eyesore,” Miller said.

Since it was in a tarp and tied with a rope to a pole, Miller believes someone may have had the debris in the back of a truck. Using the rope and pole to anchor the materials, the person then probably drove off, leaving the debris behind.

In 2013, SPU spent $826,238 on cleaning up illegal dumps. In 2014, the department spent $830,129.
Numbers are not finalized for 2015 yet, but there was $932,330 budgeted for this purpose.

Cox Media Group