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City helps residents undertake a serious spring cleanup

‘It’s always fun to see what people throw out’

Dear visitors,

Please excuse our mess.

The piles of trash you see outside our homes is not the status quo in Durango. You have caught us during our spring cleanup – a time when the city collects huge amounts of yard waste and household refuse and hauls it away for free.

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Spring cleanup is in its third week in Durango, and it takes the street department four to five weeks to hit every neighborhood. A crew of 13 uses dump trucks, front-end loaders and street sweepers to remove the trash. A giant wood chipper turns leaves and tree limbs into mulch that will be given away later this year.

It is chance for residents to tidy up and throw out debris that otherwise wouldn’t fit into a trash can. It keeps the city looking clean, said Levi Lloyd, director of city operations.

“It’s a valuable service for the citizens of Durango,” he said. “It helps keep the neighborhoods clean of junk and things that might pile up otherwise.”

Crews this week are in the Crestview neighborhood picking up worn out sofas, shaggy carpet, outdated appliances, broken lawn mowers, rusted patio furniture and almost anything residents have decided to part with.

“It’s always fun to see what people throw out,” said Greg Alsum, a street worker who has been part of the cleanup for about 20 years.

Last year, someone took apart a camper and left it on the curb, he said. Another year, someone threw out a jar of pennies that contained several “wheat pennies” minted in the first half of the 19th century. Some workers have found old pornographic collections.

It is not uncommon for scavengers to dig through the piles in search of valuables that can be sold or fixed, Lloyd said. “We actually kind of encourage that,” he said. “I don’t know what you would call it, urban foraging, maybe?”

Most city street workers can recall finding something unusual or of value during annual cleanups.

About five years ago, Lloyd said a college student tossed a Martin acoustic guitar that was in perfect condition.

“You would be amazed at what college kids throw away when they’re moving and they don’t want to move things,” he said.

City worker Roger Padilla said he laid claim to a canoe this year.

And city worker Mitch Harris said he checks every couch and recliner for loose change. It is his third year doing the cleanup. During his first year, he adopted a barbecue that someone discarded.

“My first year here, I was finding all kinds of stuff,” he said. “Now, it’s like, ‘No, I don’t need more junk.’”

Indeed, one person’s trash is not always another person’s treasure. Residents have been known to rescue old lawn mowers in hopes of repairing them, Lloyd said, but often those same mowers appear in someone else’s trash heap the very next year.

“I think there’s one lawn mower that’s made the rounds of Durango five or six times,” he said.

The city does a spring and a fall cleanup. It used to collect household items only during the fall cleanup, but two years ago it switched to collect household items only during the spring cleanup, Lloyd said.

City residents pay for cleanups as part of their monthly utility bills. But that covers only about half of the total cost, he said. The rest is covered by the city.

County residents have been known to drop off their tree trimmings in front of city residences, which is considered illegal dumping, Alsum said.

“When you come up to a property and see a whole lot of brush, and you look in their yard and you don’t see any of that vegetation, you know it didn’t come from him,” he said. “You see that often.”

County residents aren’t the only ones getting a free ride.

Last week, someone complained that two homeless men were hanging out on a couch that had been tossed to the curb side at Ella Vita Court and Avenida Del Sol. Police responded and cited both men for having an open container of alcohol, said Durango police Lt. Jacob Dunlop, in an email to the Herald. One was arrested for trespassing, because he had been warned the previous day, Dunlop said.

There are some things the city won’t accept, including rocks, concrete, dirt, bricks, electronics, batteries, hazardous materials and tree stumps.

For the most part, residents follow the rules, Lloyd said.

“If there’s something in the pile that we can’t take, like tires or whatnot, we leave it there,” he said. “And if they’re there for a week after we’ve been through the neighborhood, usually code compliance goes through and just knocks on doors and lets them know we don’t take that material.”

shane@durangoherald.com

Spring cleanup map (PDF)



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