CLEVELAND — Residents living in Cleveland's Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhood are fed-up with growing illegal dumping and are now demanding the city install video cameras to catch illegal dumpers in the act.
Community leaders like Aaron Knuckles reached a boiling point after they discovered gallons of petroleum based sealer oozing down Mt. Carmel Road, the smelly black liquid coming from several large barrels sitting at home near the street.
Kunckles told News 5 illegal dumping is a chronic problem in his neighborhood, an area that is desperately trying to make an economic comeback.
“This is appalling, it doesn’t make any sense,” Knuckles said.
“It definitely could have been a water issue and an EPA issue.”
“I can’t understand why people want to live like this. We just can’t dump whatever we want and expect mother nature to run it down the sewer.”
“We want to get the cameras over here, we want surveillance over here and we want more of the neighbors to step up and not tolerate this.”
“You got the new school, St. Lukes, and the opportunity corridor, and right in the middle you got this chaos.”
Cleveland Councilman Blaine Griffin told News 5 the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District and Cleveland Pollution Control responded to the Mt. Carmel spill to determine if it was a threat to the environment.
Griffin said the Cuyahoga Environmental Crimes Task Force is investigating and is in search of the homeowner responsible for the spill.
"This is frustrating for a neighborhood and community that is fighting to try and make sure that they keep their community pride," Griffin said.
"Residents call me every day about dumping in this area. People come and they disrespect this area and I want to bring the hammer down on people who do this kind of stuff."
"Whether this happened on purpose or whether this happened on accident it's unacceptable. We have standards that we're setting in this neighborhood and on my watch it's not going to be tolerated."
