Mass at El Punto leaves a mess
Officials: Nearly 500 tons of garbage left behind
As a sense of peace swept over Juárez, crews worked diligently to sweep up tons of trash left behind after the pope’s visit.
By early Thursday morning, crews had collected 250 tons of trash, Hector Lozoya Avila, head of the Juárez trash collection department, said in a news release. Officials expected up to 500 tons of trash would be collected by the end of the day, blaming vendors for some of it.
“We have yet to collect the areas where food stands and other business set up and didn’t respect their agreements and left trash behind after their sales,” Lozoya said in the news release just after noon Thursday.
It’s estimated that 250,000 people gathered in and around the old Juárez fairgrounds, also known as “El Punto,” where Pope Francis celebrated Mass on Wednesday. Vendors along the entrances to the site sold everything from bottled water to cellphone chargers; food such as corn on the cob, churros, fruit cups, tortas and pizza; and souvenirs such as key chains, pins, necklaces, posters, giant foam hats, T-shirts and vials labeled “holy water.”
Officials said 85 municipal employees were cleaning up the streets surrounding the fairgrounds and a portion of the fairgrounds itself Wednesday and Thursday.
Crews with PASA, a trash collection company that works with the city, also worked the fairgrounds area as well as the Plaza de la Mexicanidad, where the giant red “The X” monument stands.
On Wednesday, crews swooped in and picked up trash almost as fast as it dropped in trash bins, streets, park areas and more. Workers on the ground said they lost count of how many truckloads of trash they had picked up, saying much of it was water bottles that people left strewn around because they weren’t allowed into the Mass. Lozoya asked the public to respect the city’s public spaces and throw trash away in bins in order to preserve Juárez’s good image.
Crews also folded and stacked up chairs, took down steel barricades and removed portable toilets from around the area.
No fatalities, major traffic accidents or incidents were reported Wednesday, police officials said in a news release.
The head of the department, Oscar Luis Acosta Garcia, in a news release thanked Juárez and federal police forces, and especially the “very important participation of citizens who contributed to the smooth unfolding of this historic event on our border.”
In El Paso, barricades were removed shortly after the pope’s motorcade left the Mass area Wednesday evening and street sweepers began cleaning up roads in South Central and Downtown El Paso overnight Wednesday.
With the Santa Fe and Stanton Street bridges seeing very little vehicle or pedestrian traffic, crews in El Paso began removing portable toilets in the early evening.
El Paso city officials said no major incidents or emergencies were reported during the pope’s visit.