Pizza box serves as a lead to possible violators of illegal dumping laws

SEATTLE — Residents in the Licton Springs area of North Seattle discovered two piles of illegally dumped construction debris over the weekend.

One neighbor was able to use the delivery address on an empty pizza box in one of the heaps to trace the piles to a construction site at a home in Wedgewood.

The home undergoing renovations is 3 miles from the place where the garbage was left.

Brian Washburn, who lives down the street from one of the piles, said, "It's just flabbergasting to me. I just can't believe it, that somebody would just dump this. I mean, look at the nails in the board here. Kids could be playing around."

Dumping such materials legally at a city transfer station would cost $30 or less.

Washburn, who is a general contractor, said he immediately recognized the materials as being from a construction site. When he looked closer, he saw a pizza box, with the delivery address information still attached.

“They’re not the sharpest tool in the shed and left their address for everybody to see,” Washburn said.

He said he drove to the Wedgewood address Monday night, but no crews were there.

KIRO 7 tried to find crews at the address during the day Tuesday, but did not find anyone there either. After tracing King County property records and secretary of state records on LLCs, KIRO 7 found the phone number for the homeowner, who was out of town.

The homeowner said he had been having trouble reaching the contractors himself lately, and he could not believe that materials from his home had been tossed in another neighborhood.

When he couldn’t reach his contractor Tuesday afternoon, he sent a friend in the area to pick up the first pile of debris. After filling a truck full of garbage, the friend then drove to inspect the second pile. Seeing that the materials looked to be the same, the friend promised to come back Wednesday for the rest, so he could bring it all to a city dump.

Washburn had reported the illegal dumping to the city of Seattle’s illegal dumping hotline. Seattle Public Utilities responds to complaints, but the department does not enforce any code violations.

In February, KIRO 7 reported that Seattle Public Utilities had received more than double the number of complaints in 2015 compared to 2014: http://www.kiro7.com/news/city-hopes-to-add-people-shift-strategy-to-clean-up-illegal-dumping/119895730

Since changing strategies, SPU is now caught up with their backlog and can attend to all complaints within 10 business days, according to a spokesperson.

Seattle police have to investigate such violations, and a police spokesperson told KIRO 7 that officers took a report on this case. They also took the address tag from the pizza box as evidence.

“Now I’d like the city to pick up the ball and enforce it. I mean, there are laws against this. This is ridiculous,” Washburn said.

Cox Media Group