Hours After Morning Insiders Expose Heaps Of Trash And Debris In South Side Alley, City Crews Clean Up Huge Mess
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Morning Insiders get results. Just a few hours after we told you about filthy conditions in a South Side alley, city crews got busy cleaning up the mess.
CBS 2's Tim McNicholas takes us there.
"It feels real good to say I don't live in a trash dump anymore," Charity Parker said.
It's not Christmas, but Parker woke up to a gift on Wednesday.
"We were happy this morning," she said.
So happy she took video on her phone of a city crew cleaning up the heap of trash dumped in her alley near 115th and Wentworth.
"If it wouldn't have been for calling you all, they wouldn't have cleaned it. It would have stayed there," she said.
Just a day earlier, Parker's dad and neighbor shared their frustrations on CBS 2.
"We called 311. We called the alderman's office. There's nothing happening here," Derrick White said. "This is why we're talking to you. We need help here."
When we called Ald. Carrie Austin (34th) on Tuesday, she said fly dumping is a problem across the ward and her team does what they can to stop it.
Austin could not explain why the trash had not been cleaned up already, but she did have some advice for the story.
Austin: "But you want to make an issue out of this because the people called you."
McNicholas: "That's right. The people called us with a complaint, and we follow up on it."
Austin: "I think that our residents deserve service – of course I do. But for you to make a big issue out of this one, make a big issue of fly dumping over the whole ward – not just one area."
We looked into it and we did find junk dumped in other parts of the ward, including mattresses and a pile of debris near a vacant store at 115th and Halsted, and more trash dumped in an alley at 129th and Halsted.
The 34th ward has the 4th-most fly dumping complaints in the city, with 531 this year. Of the top 13 wards with the most complaints, all but one are on the South or West sides.
"The biggest improvement would get some of these abandoned houses torn down where they like to dump at. That would be the key point. Find who owns these lots. Either clean 'em up or sell 'em off," Parker said.
After our first story aired, we also saw the city cleaning up other alleys near Parker's. In the 34th Ward, they have no shortage of work.
We reached back out to the alderman to ask what's she's doing across the ward to tackle this problem. She didn't get back to us, but she did say in our first call that her office always relays complaints to the Department of Streets and Sanitation.
Streets and Sanitation, meanwhile, said they're investigating why Parker's alley wasn't cleaned sooner.
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