Trashing Jamaica: Resident Fights To Clean Garbage Out Of Neighborhood
To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.
Then come back here and refresh the page.
Jamaica has a garbage problem, and while many residents have simply turned their noses up at the issue, some are expressing their outrage. In Part 2 of her week-long look at the issue, NY1's Ruschell Boone turns her focus on a resident who is trying to get the city to clean up his neighborhood.NY1 has told you about the garbage problem in and around around 107th Avenue, but Joe Moretti said if you head north to 89th Avenue, the streets are filthy there, too.
"Look at this," Moretti said, showing NY1 one building in the area. "This is totally disgusting. You're tripping over garbage."
Moretti said he has written numerous emails to city and local officials about several trash problems in the neighborhood, and posted pictures of them online, but the mess keeps piling up.
"This is a major violation right here," he said. "Now, will they get ticketed for this? I don't know."
But while he was fuming about the garbage, another man said we should take a look next door, where someone was dumping in the backyard.
The tenants said they didn't know where the trash came from and the landlord doesn't live here, which is very common in the area.
The man who owns the house next door said the trash has attracted rodents.
"The rats go in on my property," he said.
After seeing this mess, Moretti sent what he called a nasty email to local leaders and the Department of Sanitation. Some have characterized his emails as out of line because he often uses profanity.
"All that garbage you saw in the front of that building on the sidewalk, all the garbage you see here in Jamaica, that is out of line," Moretti said. "That is why my emails are out of line, because this is all out of line and nobody is doing anything about it.
But there has been an effort by some in the community to clean up specific locations. Moretti himself has been alerting the city and the media about problematic areas, and NY1 has done a number of stories about the garbage. But he said that is not enough.
Moretti wants a permanent solution. In the meantime, the Department of Sanitation issued a summons to the owner of the house and another apartment building in the area. It's the building's fourth in the last six months.
Attempts to reach the owners of both properties were unsuccessful.