San José tackles illegal dumping

Illegal dumping continues to affect San José State students and surrounding communities, despite city services implementing programs to curb it. 

Hilda Morales, a blight reduction program manager for the city of San José, said there has been an increase in illegal dumping over the years and it reached its peak in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I think since (2020) it has continued to increase every year,” Morales said. “Essentially people are not utilizing the city’s junk removal program and are choosing to illegally dump by placing items outside of their home or in different areas – it could be private property.”

The city had reported that more than 10.5 million pounds of trash was collected and connected to illegal dumping, according to an Aug. 23 article from the Mercury News. 

Illegal dumping is not just an issue in San José, it’s prevalent throughout the Bay Area including Oakland.

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee announced that clean ups will operate seven days a week, according to an Oct. 17 article from CBS News. 

The city of Oakland announced that the Oakland Public Works had expanded its weekend staffing for illegal dumping cleanup crews to provide more coverage and faster clean up responses, according to an Oct.17 news release from the City of Oakland. 

Kaili Mallari, a fourth-year environmental studies student and director of the Environmental Resource Center at SJSU, said that she believes that illegal dumping is a public safety hazard since communities don’t know what is being dumped into their rivers or lakes and how it could affect them later on in life. 

“Illegal dumping is super harmful to the environment since unknown dangerous chemicals and waste enter bodies of water which could leach into our own water supply making people sick,” Mallari said. 

Illegal dumping leaches and escapes into waterways, especially with plastic waste as it breaks down into microplastics that are nearly impossible to clean up in the environment and has toxic chemicals once digested, according to an article from the Environmental Protection Agency. 

It is often that aquatic organisms digest microplastics and chemicals, making it up the food chain for people to eat, according to the same article. 

The Environmental Resource Center is a student-run organization that was established in 1967 and organizes events such as Earth Day Resource Fair and the Ride to School Day, according to a SJSU webpage. 

Morales said there are blight reduction services that respond to the illegal dumping in San José. 

Blight refers to the exterior conditions of a property that has graffiti, junk and debris that is visible from the streets and vegetation grown more than 12 inches high on properties, according to the City of San José FAQ website. 

Blight reduction services in San José remove graffiti and clean up illegal dumping, according to the City of San José website. 

“The blight reduction programs consist of an illegal dumping team that goes out on a daily basis

Monday through Friday to respond to instances of items being dumped illegally,” Morales said. 

Paul Pereira, the division manager for BeautifySJ, the program was created in 2017 by former Mayor Sam Liccardo after asking the community what they wanted for the city.

“What people were saying over and over again is they just wanted a clean and safe city,” Pereira said. “Mayor Liccardo’s state of the city address in January of 2017, he announced BeautifySJ as a new program with the city.”

BeautifySJ is a program within the Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department that works on blight reduction and encampment management.

The program removes graffiti, coordinates litter pickups, litter education, illegal dumping removal and prevention, according to the City of San José website. 

While BeautifySJ does help keep San José clean, the program is also responsible for cleaning homeless encampments, according to a Nov. 12, 2023 article from San José Spotlight.

Illegal dumping locations are reported all over San José, according to the San José GIS Open Data webpage. 

Morales said that underserved communities suffer the most and there could be multiple reasons why residents may not dispose of their trash properly. 

“It could be financial that they can’t afford to dispose of in a proper way,”Morales said. “It could also be language barriers or education about the opportunities that there are to dispose legally.” 

The city of San José had implemented cameras in undisclosed locations to combat illegal dumping and to identify violators, according to an Aug. 10 article from KRON4. 

“The intention is to capture illegal dumpers in action and then have those cases be referred over to code enforcement so that citations can be issued,” Morales said. 

Individuals who are caught illegally dumping would be fined $2,500 on the first violation, $5,000 on the second violation and $10,000 on the third violation, according to the City of San José website. 

“We’re hoping that by letting people know that there’s repercussions to committing this act, that people will utilize the resources and there will be some behavior change around it,” Morales said. 

Pereira said that there have been huge spikes in illegal dumping around Memorial Day and the end of the semester around the SJSU campus. 

“We’ve actually already predicted it because this has happened multiple years in a row to where now we have teams of people who will drive around on the weekend and proactively pick up the items,” Pereira said. 

Mallari said she used to live in the dorms and would see the trash room full of unwanted objects thrown away from students. 

“Most of the time, people would throw out decent quality items such as trash cans, pans or baking sheets,” Mallari said. 

Donna Thurmon, the supervising environmental services specialist for the city of San José’s environmental services department, oversees the junk pickup program. 

The city of San José provides free junk pickup for residents with up to 12 items, that includes large items such as mattresses, furniture and tires. To schedule for a pickup, residents must call 311 to request a pickup, according to a City of San José webpage. 

“In my department environment services does a lot of outreach on our entire recycling program and also does specific outreach just on junk pickup,” Thurmon said. “Long time San José residents do seem to know about the program and use the program. We are still finding new residents in San José who still need to find out.”

Mallari said SJSU should address the illegal dumping issue for students to reduce waste. 

“I think SJSU should definitely address this dumping issue by either creating a donation event for students to drop off their unwanted good quality items or letting students know where they can drop off certain objects,” Mallari said.