SUMTER, S.C. — Trash along the street in a Sumter neighborhood is causing an eyesore and a potential safety hazard for some residents. News 19 is On Your Side looking into the situation and trying to get answers.
“Nobody wants to come out and see an old couch in front of your yard,” Sumter resident Jamel Wright says.
A torn up brown couch sits on the median outside of Wright’s house on East Charlotte Avenue, where Wright says its been for nearly a year.
“It’s crazy like, you know, some days I come out here, I see trash in my yard and I’m like, ‘Jesus.’ It’s like an everyday thing,” Wright shakes his head. “Something’s got to be done about it. Like, you know, that’s not our responsibility to pick up other people’s trash.”
“It’s terrible,” neighbor Michael Hodge agrees. “I don't know why people just throw trash around, but it’s terrible.”
Hodge says he wishes people would stop throwing out empty furniture, using the median and nearby yards as a dump site.
“Somebody can stop doing what they’re doing. It’s wrong,” Hodge shares about the people who dump the junk. “And the city could come on time to pick it up.”
But, Hodge tells me the junk can stay outside for weeks — even months — before it’s picked up. I reached out to the City of Sumter, which says it will be hosting a free, one-time residential curbside junk removal service to pick up items like furniture and appliances at the curb in January.
“it’s just an eyesore completely,” Lt. Mike McCoy, a litter control officer for Sumter County, shares.
While this specific area on East Charlotte Avenue is in the city’s jurisdiction, McCoy says having junk dumped on property is an issue in the county too.
“I think some of it is you know, people just don't care to be honest with you. I think some people just take the easiest route out and that is to find an isolated area and get rid of it instead of driving a few miles to our closest recycling center or using two of our Sumter County landfill to get rid of it, they just take the easy way out,” McCoy shares. “It’s an eyesore to the community. Not only to wildlife, to the environment, and when this stuff breaks down, it rains, things get in our drainage, water don’t flow like it should, stops up our waterways and things of that nature. So it's just a huge, huge disadvantage across the board for everything.”
It is affecting residents and visitors like Evelyn Wright, who’s in town to see her sister.
“It’s pretty bad for this little neighborhood,” Evelyn explains. “It’s kind of like you don’t want no one to come visit you know, seeing trash on the side of the street like that.”
It’s also posing a danger to some, Wright says.
“My boys, they like to adventure out, so I don’t want them to go out there, you know, get on the couch and a nail or something pop out,” Wright says. “It is a hazard for the kids because you know they’re adventurous.”
It’s a problem that resident David Peeples says needs “a permanent solution not a bandaid fix,” which he hopes will come from the city.
“Somebody needs to do it and it seems to be nobody wants to do it,” Peeples says.
While Peeples lives a few blocks away from the street, as a Sumter native he remembers riding his bike down East Charlotte Avenue as a Cub Scout.
“A lot of people avoid this area now because of the way it looks and it’s been more or less maintained as a dump, public dump instead of residential neighborhood,” Peeples says about the difference in recent years.
The city’s free curbside junk removal service will be happening from Jan. 22 - 26.
According to the city, residents are allowed to place “large, unwanted items” that are “too large or bulky for regular trash collection…at their curb for collection.”
Residents can place furniture, appliances, mattresses and other household items at the curb. All items must be sorted into piles by Sunday, Jan. 21. For additional guidelines, you can visit KeepSumterClean.com.
To report a litter hotspot in the City of Sumter, you can visit SumterSC.gov. If you’d like to report litter in Sumter County, you can visit SumterCountySC.org.