In Salt Lake City, one resident’s convenient seasonal curbside cleanup program for bulky items and yard waste is another resident’s nightmarish summerlong illegal dump site and potential environmental hazard.
But maybe not for much longer.
After 25 years of annual spring-to-fall neighborhood cleanups, the city is changing how it picks up residential trash that doesn’t fit in the regular weekly refuse and recycling stream. The change will be better for the environment, eliminate waste piles in the streets, and cut down on dumping that mostly plagues the west side, the city says.
Residents will give up some of the curbside program’s convenience but are getting new options, including the ability to schedule their pickups instead of working to the city’s schedule. The program also will operate year-round, not just in the warmer months, and for the first time will accept electronic waste.
The new program starts July 1 and means no cleanups before then. Starting June 18, residents can call the city’s waste and recycling line at 801-535-6999 to schedule a pickup.
At the outset, residents will be allowed one pickup per year, which can include up to four car tires. Residents will have to use city-issued containers for most of their waste, with exceptions for the largest branches, but can request extras at no cost for up to a month at a time.
Full details on what is called the Call2Haul program are available on the city’s SLCGreen website. Information also is being mailed to residents.
The changes come following a survey last summer that received more than 4,000 responses. The new program was the choice of 49 percent of respondents out of four options.
Lance Hemmert of the Poplar Grove neighborhood on Salt Lake City's west side started a Facebook page to document and combat excessive curbside refuse in his neighborhood. This photo is from March 2017.
Why the change?
Piles of yard waste in the streets contaminate stormwater runoff and cause traffic and safety issues. On the west side, the piles also were magnets for illegal dumping.
“Yes, this cleanup in some neighborhoods was quite a beloved program. We definitely heard that,” said Sophia Nicholas, a spokeswoman for the city’s sustainability department. “But in other parts of the city it was a real problem. So what we’re trying to do is not only respond to the stormwater issues but also say, ‘OK, what can we do to offer some enhancements, what can we do to eliminate the city’s role in the illegal dumping that we have on the west side and also move toward something that’s more convenient?’”
On the city’s west side, Poplar Grove resident Lance Hemmert, who last year started a Facebook page called “The SLC Trashpocalypse,” welcomed the move. Retired from the Army, he bought his house in 2015.
“You can imagine my surprise in 2016 when everybody started dumping their refuse out in the street,” the two-tour Iraq veteran said. “This is the first non-Third World country I’ve been in where people were encouraged to dump the trash in the street. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
For Cheryl Healy, a 30-year Sugar House area resident, the city’s survey was “disingenuous,” steering people to select the new program. The city, she added, has “been really unclear on explaining this to people.”
Healy said the new system might mean more collection trucks in the neighborhood and wouldn’t stanch the flow of other road-borne contaminants in stormwater runoff.
“I really like that so much of it was informal recycling, with the scavengers” picking through the piles for salvageable items, she said. “I’ve seen some very mild dumping. I just didn’t think, at least on the east side, that the particular system was broken.”
