Residents Fight Dumping in Strike : Garbage Warfare Waged in Streets of Philadelphia

Standing guard at the barricades, only a pungent sniff away from a 50-yard-long mound of rotting garbage, Richard Atkinson was explaining his technique for dissuading those who would dump more trash in his once-neat northeast neighborhood.

“I just stuffed a guy in his trunk,” the 6-foot-5-inch, 230-pound truck driver told the seven middle-age women blocking the street with lawn chairs.

Dolores Barbieri, though barely half his bulk, was not impressed. The women, she said, knew how to fight fire with fire--or at least garbage with garbage.

“When people would drive up and throw a few bags, we’d just throw them back,” she said with a smile. “Plus, we’d add a few. They’d give us three, we’d give them five.”

So goes the action on the front lines of filth in Philadelphia’s Great Garbage Strike. After 14 days of a strike by non-uniformed municipal workers, residents in the nation’s fifth largest city are struggling with hot tempers, hotter weather, growing garbage and fears of rats and vermin.

City officials estimate that 10,000 tons of fetid fruit, rusty appliances, TV innards, used diapers, soggy paper and other trash has accumulated at 15 emergency disposal sites on city-owned parks, vacant lots, median strips and other empty fields.

In at least three cases, angry residents like those in Somerton, a comfortable suburban-style community of $85,000 single-family homes, have effectively closed the dumps by manning round-the-clock street barricades to keep dumpers away from their homes.

“We don’t want the smells, we don’t want the trash,” said Atkinson, 25. “We just got fed up.”

At the other authorized collection sites, the garbage is baking in heaps and mounds in the hot July sun.

Acres of Offal

“It could be worse,” said Lou Grosso, 60, surveying an acre or so of offal at 9th and Callowhill streets, within walking distance of the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. “It could be in the streets.”

Much of it is. Trash barrels are overflowing on nearly every corner. And midnight dumpers have dropped thousands of bags, boxes and bottles in hundreds of unauthorized dumps--from neatly tied black Hefty bags in ritzy Rittenhouse Square, to soggy piles amid the azaleas and spreading elms in lovely Fairmount Park, to eight-foot mounds defiantly dumped around “No Dumping--$300 Fine” signs at a shuttered city trash incinerator down on the Delaware River.

“This is a legal dump, isn’t it?” asked Maryann Braun, tossing four bags on an illegal pile on a deserted cobblestone street several blocks from the plant. “Oh, I hope so. My husband’s a police officer.”

A muggy heat wave of 90-degree-plus temperatures has socked the city nearly every day since the strike began on July 1. City health officials say daily inspections have not found a public health hazard from rats, flies, dogs and vermin. Others disagree.

‘Rats as Big as Cats’

“You see rats as big as cats coming out of the sewers,” Jesse Faulkner, 53, a bank guard, complained as he tossed his trash at a temporary dump set amid picnic tables and a playground on the edge of Fairmount Park in North Philadelphia. “This is a hazard to children, it’s a hazard to the neighbors and it’s a hazard to the city.”

Except for thundershowers, little relief appeared in sight. Negotiations broke off Sunday night between the city and District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents nearly 13,000 workers, including the garbage collectors.

Earl Stout, president of District Council 33, said the major obstacle was the city’s demand for an audit of the union’s health and welfare fund. “We are not going to allow that to happen,” he said.

Mayor W. Wilson Goode said that informal talks would continue. “The informal talks may be by telephone, may be by carrier pigeon, may be in person, but informal talks are important to bring this to a conclusion,” he told reporters.

The city’s 2,500-member white-collar union, District Council 47 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, ratified a new two-year contract Saturday, but, under an amnesty clause in the contract, few crossed picket lines to return to work Monday, according to the mayor’s office.

Meanwhile, Goode postponed implementing his plan to hire private haulers Monday to cart away the city’s trash. Officials said they were concerned about possible violence between striking sanitation workers and private haulers.

The city’s famed Art Museum and all libraries were shut, community health center services were curtailed, broken traffic lights caused at least one accident and nearly one third of the city’s swimming pools were closed. Instead, children and adults played in ornamental fountains at Logan Circle and on Independence Mall.

But all eyes--and noses--are focused on the garbage.

“It’s like a new city skyline,” said Bob Kennedy, 25, peering at nearby City Hall and other downtown skyscrapers as he tossed several bags on the towering trash at 9th and Callowhill. “It’s horrible,” added his wife, Monica, holding her nose.

“I’ve been trying to keep mine in the freezer, but I didn’t think it would go this long,” James Boone, 38, a bus driver, said as he threw four bags onto the city site at 33rd and Oxford streets.

Besides affecting the quality of life, the strike could affect Goode’s chances for reelection next year. The mayor is still struggling to rehabilitate his image after the MOVE tragedy last year in which 11 people were killed and 61 homes destroyed in a police confrontation with anarchists.

“Our city’s a joke,” said Ed Buck, a 26-year-old engineer dumping at a collection site by an office complex on Rhawn Street in the northeast area of the city. “First, they drop a bomb on row houses. Now this.”

Some residents have taken to toting their trash to relatives in the suburbs or to summer homes on the Jersey shore. And not every street is filthy.

Residents Sweep Sidewalks

Down by Pat’s King of Steaks, a landmark cheese-steak emporium in South Philadelphia, a closely knit community of narrow two-story row houses and Old World customs, gray-haired Bea Paolini, 62, carefully swept her sidewalk with a red broom and scrubbed her gray slate stoop, as she has every day for years.

“We have a lady in the next block who comes down every morning and picks up loose papers,” she said. “That helps too.”

And there may be some benefits. After years of discussion, the city plans to start a recycling program. And some enterprising entrepreneurs have cashed in on the city’s garbage woes.

Carlos Taylor, 12, and his friend, Amin Montgy, 9, have earned about $40 apiece over the weekend. Dwarfed by their giant pushcarts, they roam the streets of North Philadelphia, charging neighbors 50 cents a bag to haul the trash to a nearby collection site.

Earning Money for Clothes

“I need clothes and sneakers,” said Carlos, who wore a torn shirt and pants. “My mom says we’ll buy food,” added tiny Amin.

And, at the collection site near City Hall, Vance Simpson, 33, and his friend, Abdul Malik, 38, unloaded their fourth $50 load of the day from a battered blue van. At $1 a bag, the pair had plenty of work.

“This strike can go on forever and ever and ever,” Simpson said with a grin.