Baltimore's DPW workers describe "concerning" facility conditions detailed in report

BALTIMORE -- Employees with Baltimore's Department of Public Works hope the deplorable conditions inside their facilities improve soon.

Photos from a Baltimore Inspector General report released this week appear to show decaying conditions inside nine DPW facilities, including broken sinks, lack of toilet paper and issues with air conditioning, among other problems.

"It's a sad statement," said DPW Worker Stancil McNair. "I'm getting ready to say, prisoners get treated better than we do, as far as, they get everything they're supposed to have."

McNair, who works in the solid waste department, said he's worked for DPW for more than a decade at the Cherry Hill Reedbird Yard and the Eastern Sanitation Yard at Bowley's Lane, two of the facilities named in the report.

DPW Deputy Director Richard Luna said the issues are being addressed and they plan to upgrade several of the facilities in the next few years.

"The Inspector General's report is concerning for all of us here at DPW," Luna said.

"A safety issue"

Earlier this month, Baltimore's Inspector General Isabel Cumming discovered that DPW employees at the city's Cherry Hill Reedbird Yard had been working in the heat without the city providing water or proper cooling facilities.

"Imagine coming out here working in 100-plus weather – no ice, no AC or nothing and you got to deal with it," McNair said.

Since the complaints at the Cherry Hill facility were investigated, Cumming says she's received more complaints.

"There were employees telling us that some of the conditions were so bad it was becoming a safety issue," Cumming said.

Last week, Cumming's entire office went to eight other facilities and found poor conditions.

Those facilities were:

• Cherry Hill Yard 701 Reedbird
• Eastern Sanitation Yard 6101 Bowley's Lane
• DPW Special Services Street Sweeping 111 Kane Street
• DPW Landfill 6100 Quarantine Road
• DPW Property Management 231 S. Kresson Street (DPW rents property)
• Sisson St. Drop-off Center 2840 Sisson Street
• DPW Inner Harbor/Downtown Operations 3311 Eastbourne Avenue (DPW rents property)
• DPW Northwest Transfer Station 5030 Reisterstown Road
• DPW Water and Wastewater Yard 2947 Washington Boulevard

"In the locker rooms, they have hot water running," Cumming said. "They had a fan barely blowing and they had an air conditioner that was only doing 84 degrees as well. The conditions were horrific."

Deputy Director Luna said DPW is going through the report and fixing some of the issues.

"Some of those minor, minor repairs, that need to be addressed at those facilities, and that's what we're currently working on, and we're making that a top priority here," Luna said.

$20 million for new facilities

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott addressed the Inspector General's report.

"We're talking about facilities that have zero, zilch, nada investment and now you have an administration that is actually going to be building new ones," Scott said.

Scott said $20 million will soon be invested into new facilities at many of the sites listed in the report.

According to DPW, those upgrades are in the design stage and should be completed early next year.  

"We're going to pull the band-aid off and actually build the facilities that our workers deserve and not just consistently patch up buildings that are long passed their life cycle," Scott said.

The City Union of Baltimore, which represents some of the DPW workers, released a statement that accuses the city of not sufficiently supporting its workers with healthy and safe working environments.