Lynwood : School Has Its Fill of Junk

It was a case of too much trash. Students and teachers returning to Hosler Junior High School, 11300 Spruce St., on Monday found the parking lot in front of the school overflowing with trash.

“It stinks like a dump,” said Rosemarie Gironda, a veteran special education teacher at the school. Gironda, who has taught in the Lynwood Unified School District for 22 years, immediately got on the telephone to City Hall to complain.

The parking lot was filled with old sofas, box springs, water heaters, mattresses and other discarded junk that is not regularly picked up by trash haulers.

The city provides free trash pickup at a central location--the school--twice a year for such bulky items. Removal is done by special arrangement with the city’s contract trash hauler, Western Waste Industries of Gardena.

Each year the trash load becomes greater, city officials said. When 35 large commercial trash bins placed in the parking lot Saturday were filled, residents, with the approval of officials, piled the trash on the ground.

“We intended to haul the extra trash away but people kept coming,” said Joe Wang, city director of public works. “Every year there is more trash.”

There also were reports of some equipment breakdowns, preventing city workers from scooping up the mess and placing it in 15 additional trash dumpsters that were brought to the scene.

By Monday evening the trash had been removed.