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NEWS PAGE
"I never think of the future, it comes soon enough." - A. Einstein
10 Streets and San cameras will try to spot illegal dumpers
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-fly27.html (2005-06-02)
City Hall is installing 10 high-tech surveillance cameras -- capable of zeroing on license plate numbers in the dark of night -- to catch "fly-dumpers" who unload oil, garbage and construction debris on vacant lots and public streets.
Since 1993, the Department of Environment has had 10 cameras strategically positioned across the city to stop illegal dumping.
The decision to double the number of cameras -- and upgrade to a model with night-vision capability -- is aimed at eliminating an apparent epidemic of dumping waste on the fly, often overnight when no one is around.
More than 3,000 times last year, Streets and Sanitation crews were forced to clean up garbage from fly-dumpers at taxpayers’ expense to prevent it from creating what Environment Commissioner Marcia Jimenez calls an "atmosphere of despair" in Chicago neighborhoods.
"We’ve had such difficulties in the past, my office and community groups have actually gone through the garbage to try and find some envelopes or identifiers to see where this material was coming from," said Ald. John Pope (10th), whose Southeast Side ward has been dumped on for years.
"In one incident, we found that it was coming from the rehabilitation of a single-family home. We knocked on the owner’s door and . . . the lady immediately contacted the contractor and said, ’What the heck are you doing? I’m paying good money for you to do my house and you’re taking this material and dumping it?’ Everyone is being ripped off. The city had to clean it up. The property owner . . . was not having her material properly disposed of. And the contractor was getting off cheap."
First Deputy Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Anne Kent refused to disclose the location of the new cameras for fear of alerting the bad guys. She would only say they would be positioned on utility poles near vacant lots, railroad embankments and on street corners where dumping is rampant -- and that she’s hoping a $500 bounty for reporting fly dumping will encourage Chicagoans to blow the whistle.
"They’re so hard to catch. They’re in the middle of the night. Even though our men start at 6 a.m., they generally [come] at 2 or 3 in the morning when no one is around. It’s very difficult to catch them," Kent said.
Unlike the surveillance cameras positioned on street corners in high-crime areas, nobody will be monitoring the 10 new cameras. Instead, Streets and San will check the locations each morning to see if garbage has been dumped there. If there’s a pile of debris, they’ll pull the tape, get the dumper’s license plate and bring the hammer down.
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Wednesday, 20 of August
