Dumping

Redwood Road in Castro Valley splits East Bay Regional Park District and East Bay Municipal Utility District for 8 miles -- EBRPD to the west and EBMUD to the east. At Pinewood Road, it snakes west, uphill, for 2 miles, ending at Skyline Boulevard. This 10-mile stretch of road is the least used road in the Bay Area. This statement is unofficial and unauthorized, of course, based on my daily use of the road. It’s also littered with industrial, construction and household trash from dumpers. Dumping is this year’s opioid epidemic.

After dropping my son at school, my dog and I drive to the foot of Redwood Road. Peppered with trailheads, we used to hike miles into the urban backcountry of the East Bay, not seeing another person along the trail. Now, my dog is old and his back legs weak, so, if we stop at a trailhead, we walk about 100 yards, stop, and return to the car. Hiking is now about standing around waiting for the dog to poop, nothing else.

Even though we no longer utilize the hiking trails along Redwood Road, I still mosey across the 10-mile stretch every morning, the dog in the back. He can no longer enjoy a walk, but he still relishes an open window in the backseat of the car.  I enjoy the solitude of the road, never breaching 30 mph, while listening to a curated Spotify playlist.

Besides occasional RVs from Chabot Campground, the road is lightly sprinkled with rain-or-shine bicyclists, EBRPD work vehicles, and the lone sports car, taking advantage of a cop-less, underutilized windy road. That’s it. It’s normal to pass less than 5 cars while traveling the 10 miles. It can feel like traveling back in time - before traffic usurped weather as the news of the day.

Dumping usually occurs within the first 2 miles of the road: small and large mounds of roofing material, household garbage and car parts located on dirt pullouts and trailhead parking lots. Clear video footage, license plate identification and/or photos of the dumpers breaking the law doesn’t equate to a fine or jail, so must dumps are at the end and beginning of the 10 mile section of road. There’s not much risk involved. Dumpers are lazy because of this. Deeper dumps — parted cars and large appliances — are farther along the road, the sheer weight of the materials requiring more time and multiple people to unload the cargo. Car axels tend to be heavy.

Traveling this road for multiple years, I’ve become somewhat of an expert on dumps, not dumpers:

·        The Mound: This is the most common dump. More than likely, the materials are pushed from the bed of a truck. When the materials reach the height of the truck bed, the goods are tossed on top of the mound, spilling down the opposite side of the truck. These types of dumps tend to attract other dumpers.

·        The Drive-By: Mostly household garbage in bags, this dump is tossed out of a speeding car, resulting in bags spotting the side of the road for up to 200 yards.

·      
      The Guilty Type-A: This is my favorite small dump. Transported in the trunk or backseat of car, the dump materials are mostly household goods – paint, plastic children’s toys and garbage. Instead of throwing out it the window, this unique dumper places the goods in a small, tidy pile, taking up as little space as possible. I wouldn‘t be surprised that if it contained a note saying “sorry.” This person has problems with clutter and messiness, but not enough to properly dispose of the items.

Dumping is mostly an Oakland, CA problem, that’s what I thought. I was wrong. After seeing articles about other cities in the USA dealing with the same problem and talking to friends in the Bay Area who live in the suburbs and complain about dumping, it appears that it is a new phenomenon or, more likely, the internet has exposed something that was always prevalent. T

Oakland reacts to the problem with an app: See-Click-Flix. An app to report dumping and other public nuisances.  In a perfect world, other than Oakland, it looks like this: see a dump, take a picture and hit send. Dump gone. Pretty simple. If the dump is removed immediately or even within a few days, it’s a large miracle — comparable to curing poverty.

In comes another app to complain about the problem with See-Click-Fix: Next Door. Next Door is like Facebook but for your neighborhood, demarcated by zip codes. When the idea of Next Door was pitched to backers, it probably emphasized stronger, safer communities, some sort of online neighborhood watch component and local referrals for household services. In reality, the aging Boomers and Gen X Boomer-sympathizers who mostly use the app, speculate whether the bang they heard was a gunshot or a firecracker; why a man is sitting in a car in front of their house and dumping. Dumping is reported to See-Click-Fix and then complained about when it sits untouched for months.  A post on dumping regularly receives 100s of replies.

Commenting on Next Door or any social media platform, regardless of how neutral or innocuous the comment is, will lead to diverse comments – comments I don’t want to hear. Even though I have valuable information that will help expedite the cleanup of dumped goods, I stay quiet. If I were to comment, I’d list two solutions for expediting pickup of dumped goods:

1.     If possible, move the dump to the center of the road. The ensuing traffic jam will result in multiple calls to DPW and immediate cleanup.

2.     For large dumps, find an object with a large face to write on. Think appliances and plywood. Bring a can of spray-paint and write “Fuck” in large letters. More than likely, our puritan society will be outraged and the calls will flood in for removal. It works.

You can see why I don’t post this solution on Next Door.

A year or so ago, Oakland hired experts in the field of trash and dumping to find out what the hell was going on. Where they found these experts, I don’t know. Prior to hiring the experts, Oakland blamed out-of-towners and the homeless for the problem. Of course, Oakland was wrong. The experts said 3% of dumping was from the homeless and the rest was pretty much pinned on the residents of Oakland — people who work in construction, trash removal, restaurants and yard debris removal.

Driving on Redwood Road this morning, I saw the spoils of last night’s dumps: dented car bumper, disabled Big Wheel, drywall, etc.  As the road winded to the top of a hill, I thought: “Maybe I’m an expert.”