New Ordinance to clean up Yakima

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Story Published: Nov 3, 2009 at 1:31 AM PDT

By Stacy Lilienthal

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Yakima --- City leaders hope a new ordinance will keep trash off neighborhood streets.

Garbage carts throughout Yakima are too full of trash. Many are so full, garbage has no place to go but the neighbor's yard. "It's a mess," started Victor Humphrey, "It's very discouraging to me. I've been fighting it for over 25 years."

The city says it has seen an increase in neighbor complaints

The problem stems from the pocketbook.

"A lot of people prefer to have the smaller cart because it is less money," Refuse and Recycling manager, Nancy Fortier explained.

A small, standard size cart is about 9 dollars a month; a large one is about 15. But a new ordinance will make people upgrade from one size to one three times bigger after three weeks of consecutive overflow. It might actually help people save money since it would have cost residents about 2 dollars a week in overflow bills from the city.

And the city thinks it will clean up neighborhoods.

"I'm telling you it's an everyday thing. The wind blows and they never close the lids so it's always over here," Humphrey sighed while looking at the nearby garbage carts.

He hopes things change when the new ordinance takes effect in a couple of weeks.

There was an ordinance already in place for big metal bins. This change will expand it to include individual and smaller households with overflow problems.

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