L.A. officials vow to clean up illegal trash at double speed

Piles of smelly, rotting trash dumped illegally in some of Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods have been allowed to sit for weeks because dumping has increased: The number of complaints has doubled in the last year while sanitation staffing has remained stagnant, the city’s top public works officials reported Monday.

In a report to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the officials defended the city’s refuse-collection efforts but vowed to cut response times to citizen complaints by half -- from an average of 17 days to between seven and 10 days -- and recommended streamlining the city’s debris-removal programs by consolidating them under a single bureau.

“It’s a complex issue, but we have been doing a fabulous job. Can we be more efficient? Absolutely,” said Cynthia Ruiz, president of the city’s Board of Public Works, who submitted the report Monday evening with the directors of the city’s bureaus of Sanitation and Street Services.

Villaraigosa ordered the study after The Times reported last month that refuse, including dead animals, festered for weeks in some South L.A. alleys and that illegal-dumping arrests by Public Works investigators had dropped from 359 in 2002 to 55 in 2007 and to three so far this year.

The Times reported this week that city records showed that residents in some South L.A. neighborhoods, as well as an aide to the mayor, waited up to two months for refuse to be removed after they alerted the city.

Pockets of Watts, for instance, are hot spots where violators discard everything from household trash to concrete rubble. But none of the 55 arrests by Public Works investigators last year were in those areas, according to city records.

Arrests for illegal dumping declined in the last five years, in part because investigators for the Bureau of Street Services have diverted their attention to illicit street vendors, including those conducting illegal food sales and peddling counterfeit goods, the report said.

“I’m sure there’s enough blame to go around, but the issue here is how to move forward and reduce as much of the trash and blight in people’s neighborhoods while we crack down on the illegal dumpers,” said Councilwoman Janice Hahn, whose district includes Watts. “If we can make some more arrests, and prosecute some of these illegal dumpers, people will know that we will not tolerate this.”

Hahn said officials at the Los Angeles Police Department have told her that officers will crack down on illegal dumpers.

In the mid-1990s, the LAPD had an aggressive surveillance and enforcement program to catch illegal dumpers, but it became a low priority as officers were pressed to address “more serious life-threatening criminal activities,” the report said.

The number of illegal-dumping complaints to the city’s “311” call center more than doubled in the last year, from 2,933 to 6,550.

The hardest-hit areas are represented by council members Hahn, Jan Perry and Bernard C. Parks, whose districts all include portions of South Los Angeles.

The increase in dumping was blamed on “commercial haulers,” or construction companies, that dumped building materials and other construction waste into alleyways rather than paying to haul the material to a landfill, the report said.

Much of the problem also comes from local residents, some of whom may dump refuse and bulk items because they believe that “alley cleanups are a normal service provided by the city,” the report said.

Cleaning up sites in “gang-infested or otherwise dangerous areas” often was delayed as sanitation crews waited for police escorts, it said.

In the report, public works officials recommended an outreach campaign to let residents know that the city will pick up bulk items and other refuse at no charge.

The report also recommended stricter regulation of small waste-hauling companies and consolidating the separate debris-removal programs run by the city’s Sanitation and Street Services bureaus.

--

phil.willon@latimes.com