Under cover of night, trucks have been regularly dumping rotten produce in an industrial neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles.
In the morning, the sidewalk and pavement along Naomi Avenue are littered with crates of discarded melons, tomatoes and other overripe fruit, creating an ugly sight and putrid odor.
The problem has persisted for years, according to local business owners, who say city officials have done little to alleviate the problem.
The downtown neighborhood around Naomi Avenue is home to several produce distributors and markets, and local residents suspect that trucks delivering produce have made the street an unofficial dumping ground for produce that is too old or spoiled to sell. On a recent morning, a sour-sweet stench wafted in the air, and a blanket of flies settled on the ground near the spilled produce boxes that amass after weeks of neglect.
Local residents say whole pallets of fruit are often left on the street.
“I have been trying to get the city’s attention about all of this, but it takes weeks for them to respond,” Miriam Ronquillo said from behind the counter at her family’s market near Naomi Avenue.
The illegal dumping was reported this week by Fox 11, but Ronquillo says she has documented the illegal dumping for years. She said she sends pictures to the city of Los Angeles via its MyLA311 app but has often had to wait weeks for a response.
Her family pays the city for their own dumpster bins to dispose of their own trash rather than leave it on the street to attract vermin or other pests, Ronquillo said.
“It’s just frustrating because we do everything right, and then you have these other people who ruin the neighborhood for everyone else,” Ronquillo said.
In a statement, L.A. City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office said she was aware of the “ongoing dumping at E. 10th St & Naomi Ave and has been working closely” with the Los Angeles Sanitation & Environment Department.
“This site was cleared again on Tuesday morning,” Jurado’s office said. “We will continue to monitor the area and coordinate with LASAN [the sanitation department] on regular clean-ups and long-term solutions.”
The Los Angeles Public Works Department, the agency that oversees the sanitation bureau, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Closer to Olympic Boulevard, a group of workers stacked crates of fresh strawberries on the sidewalk and loaded some of them onto a truck. They worry that the people who illegally dump on the street will hurt the reputation of everyone in the produce industry and their livelihood.
The work is hard, said Horace Sandoval, who has worked in downtown for at least 12 years. Oftentimes, people take for granted that produce is available.
“People don’t want to think about where they get their fruit,” Sandoval said in Spanish. “But this is the truth. Sometimes, it ends up here [in the street], and it’s sad. Because someone picked it and then it’s not eaten, enjoyed. Just thrown down.”
Along Naomi Avenue, several tents and makeshift shelters line the street. Colorful murals and graffiti adorn the walls near the mess of burst-open watermelons and putrid lemons.
“We tell them to stop, and they just ignore us,” said a man named Chris, who lives on Naomi Avenue in an RV. “We don’t want that, but they keep on walking by and dump it all.”
A woman who said her name was Brenda said she had lived on the street for about four months. Some nights, she peeks outside her tent and sees the trucks unload the goods, and other times she can hear people hauling the produce onto the street by wheelbarrow or hand truck.
“We’re not told why they’re bringing all of that. Is it for us because we’re out here?” she said. “I tried to eat some of the fruit once. Grapes, watermelon and some other stuff. But I stopped once I saw the rats gathering around the food. They looked extra large, big rats that are deformed.”
She thinks that the dumping has grown more frequent in the last month and the types of rats that are showing up on the street are getting bigger.
“It’s not fair,” she said. “It’s almost like they mocking us by leaving food.”
The post ‘Extra large’ rats flourish and feast on an L.A. street turned dumping ground for rotting produce appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
