Leave Congress Park’s Trash Bins in the Alleys

By Andrew Clark & Wendy Moraskie

The City mandate requiring Congress Park residents to haul trash, recycling and compost bins from the alley to the street needs to be reversed for many obvious reasons.

City fathers designed alleys for services

At the turn of the last century, services, whether provided by businesses or the City, were designed to fit the neighborhoods the way they were built.  In Congress Park, as in many of the older parts of Denver, the city fathers designed alleys with flat access to the backs of the houses, and the various services at the time, including coal delivery, ice delivery, horse and cart maintenance, and trash pick up, among others, were devised and directed to occur in the alleys.

At an April 2017 CPN neighborhood meeting regarding the replacement of alley dumpsters with the smaller bins, Denver Waste Manager Charlotte Pitt said former Councilwoman Jeanne Robb had requested that smaller recycling trucks be purchased.  Ms Pitt reported that three trucks were purchased and three more were ordered, specifically for use in Congress Park.

This was working just fine until a few years ago when someone at the City Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) Solid Waste Management (SWM) decided to buy trash trucks that were too big for the alleys. Not sure how the contract was awarded without checking truck and alley sizes, but there we are.

New trucks required trash in streets

DOTI told us the new larger trucks would require a change in trash pick up service. Instead of residents leaving the bins near the alley and moving them a few feet for alley pick up once a week, residents would be required to bring the bins around to the front of the house and leave them in the street, between parked cars. Upon notification of the new trucks and this service change, residents raised objections that ranged from logistics and the access from alleys to streets, the plentiful Denver front yard slopes, parking, safety and ecological concerns.

DOTI’s solution was to ignore the residents’ objections.

Do the math

Picking up trash in the alleys requires a smaller truck that was already in DOTI’s inventory, and each alley gets one pass through, totaling about 17 miles.  With larger trucks the theory is the same, but the trucks, with can-lifters only on one side, have to drive each street twice, once in each direction, and now each avenue twice, totaling at least 50 miles.  So, these new larger trucks are causing more passes down each block, more employee time and fuel usage, increased damage to cars, increased danger to pedestrians, and residents (including our seniors, disabled and the occasionally ill person), having to move their bins from the alley, out front to the street.

In addition, the bi-monthly large item pickup is also occurring in the street, meaning broken furniture, mattresses, rugs, Christmas trees and other large items that used to be in the alley for pickup, are now among the parked cars on our streets, causing another safety and cleanliness dilemma.

At a July 2021 Congress Park meeting, DOTI SWM division director Art Mejia presented a slide deck touting the new street pick up plan as providing opportunities for better customer service, less environmental impact, improved employee and community safety, and decreased property damage.  In fact, the results are the opposite of what he presented.

Art said SWM’s goals included listening to the community and improving communications.  Those objectives are not being met, either.

The slide show included photos of thank you notes to SWM for their service – those photos were taken in alleys.

What can YOU do?

In spite of repeated objections and many individuals’ calls and emails to DOTI, Congress Park residents have received very little response to this issue from DOTI or our city councilman Chris Hinds.  The next step may require a more organized approach.  Mark your calendar for the April 17 Congress Park meeting (sign up for the CPN email blast at www.congressparkneighbors.org to get the meeting details) to hear a proposal to make our voices heard at DOTI.