Dumping, litter rile Ohio neighborhood
Illegal dumping is prevalent in Franklinton alleys.
Longtime neighborhood activist Rebecca Hunley said she and her Franklinton neighbors have been fighting litter and dumping problems for a decade. She’s frustrated enough that she contacted 31 officials last month, including Columbus City Council members and other city and state officials, to push them to fix it.
“What the hell are you doing and when are you going to get it done?” said Hunley, a former Franklinton area commissioner who now leads the Franklinton Area Neighbors Civic Association.
She and others say peo- ple from outside the area are dumping contracting mate- rials, tires and other debris in alleys. “Broken dressers, bicycles,” said Judy Box, a Franklinton area commissioner, who said trash is the No. 1 problem in the neighborhood.
They also say that trashfilled homeless camps blight the area.
Trash from one, Steve Faulkner said, is on wooded, city-owned property just east of Route 315 near the Scioto River. Faulkner, the owner of Playful Pets, a dog day care in Franklinton, said the trash poses a health and safety hazard because it includes propane tanks, syringes and bags of human feces.
Litter and trash are prob- lems not only in Franklinton, but throughout the city, said Robin Davis, a spokeswoman for Mayor Andrew J. Ginther.
“The city is working on that,” Davis said. “We are aware of illegal dumping con- cerns and are in the process of listening to the community and dealing with those issues.
“We are trying to listen to the story to come up with a comprehensive plan citywide.”
Emerald Hernandez, assistant director in the city’s Department of Neighborhoods, said she is aware of the debris on the city-owned property and is working with Trent Smith, who leads the Franklinton Board of Trade, a business group, and the Franklinton Area Commission. She said the city continues to remove homeless camps and work with agencies that do outreach work with homeless people.
Davis said the city recently contacted the Ohio Department of Transportat ion about trash at a camp on state-owned property near the westbound off-ramp of the Interstate 70-West Broad Street interchange. ODOT quickly took care of it, she said.
Smith said illegal dumping is prevalent in Franklinton alleys. He has approached Columbus City Council for $50,000 to help fund a pilot program in which homeless people are paid $10 an hour to clean up homeless camps and other areas.
Box said the city’s refuse division has placed cameras in Franklinton to discourage dumping.
Another program aimed at cleaning up Franklinton is a “litter league” modeled after one in Linden, in which teams compete to pick up the most trash.
Jackie Kemble is the community partnership man- ager for Land Grant Brewing in Franklinton. Land Grant has a litter league team that collected 83 30-gallon bags of trash last year. The next competition is Saturday.
She said she doesn’t believe that trash is as big a problem in Franklinton as some believe it is. But the litter league shows that the board of trade, which runs the league, has taken steps to address trash concerns by involving the community.
“I think these are flash points for people,” Kemble said. “They go along with the narrative of a developing neighborhood.”