This issue was recategorized from Trash & Recycling to Parks Request.

i would urge people not to lay all the blame on the small businesses at long wharf for this situation - this is largely the city's failure to provide and maintain the appropriate facilities and cleanup directives for a local attraction it acknowledges & promotes.

I see the City of New Haven Parks Department cleaning up around there every Monday morning on my way into work. Many of the workers are doing it by hand with buckets and pickers. They are trying to keep it clean first thing on a Monday after a long and very busy weekend of food truck patrons. I truly think the birds pull lots and lots of garbage out of the overflowing and uncovered trash bins as I've seen the crows and seagulls in the act. The City probably cannot afford to pay their sanitation workers the OT to work on the weekends to keep the bins empty. Perhaps the trucks need to contribute to some extra sanitation fee for weekend emptying. The large bins for the truck workers next to I-95 along with the multiple trash bins for the patrons on the Harbor side are clearly not enough to survive from Friday through Sunday night without anyone emptying them until Monday morning. Good luck.

Im not sure how often downtown trash collection happens but I have not seen a full bin in quite a while, so perhaps Long Wharf trash pickup can be placed on the same type of schedule as downtown. Lord and residents knows we pay enough taxes to fund trash collection! We need the small business to continue to strive and help fund our economy.

The trash eventually finds its way into the water and then the entire area looks disgusting. The stench is horrible. If the vendors cannot police their customers perhaps fines are in order. If the city has to pay more for trash removal and upkeep shouldn't the trucks pay for it?!

I realize birds do pick at the trash but honestly they can not be responsible for the volume of trash around there. And many times there are tied bags of trash left near the rocks right along the water’s edge and on the barriers along the road so the patrons also contribute to the problem.

Thanks for your comments. We service the trash receptacles daily at Long Wharf which is the same frequency that we do on the Green. We have staff assigned to poke trash in the area daily as well. We also have a number of smart trash cans that alert us when they are filled and overfull cans is not what is driving the problem. That said, we do try to get the trash truck down a second time on weekend afternoons but often the truck can not make it down into the area and make the turns due to the level of congestion so its just are smaller trucks which tend to poking. The overtime for poking on weekends is paid for by the registration from the food truck vendors.

We are exploring different schedules, new infrastructure and other creative solutions but much of what is driving these problems are the behaviors of patrons who do not clean up after themselves. I will leave the request as acknowledged instead of closed to indicate that we know we haven't yet solved the systematic problem.

To say it is the fault of the patrons is painfully obvious isn't it? It isn't the seagulls who are throwing trash around is it??!! I think we may have hit on a big part of the reason why there is no appropriate clean up people. We have just gone into the twilight zone of "exploring options"...next thing will be a "task force" !! lolol

Responsibility split between I Don't Care patrons and the city not having nearly enough trash receptacles. I feel for the DPW guys using a stick and bucket picking it all up. Upper management to blame for being out of touch.

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