High winds cause unhappy residents

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - When winds are 60 mph, you might expect to see a little debris flying around. What the residents of Crystal Avenue saw on Friday was so much more.

Crystal Avenue sits right across from Buffalo Recycling Enterprises making the residents used to picking up garbage in their yards after windy days. This time however, was the worst, causing crews to come out early Saturday to clean up the debris, as well as unhappy residents.

A resident of Crystal Avenue for 7 years, Scott Stranahan says, "It's a quality of life issue. We want the plant to be there. We want them to make money; they provide jobs but we feel we don't have to live this way with them sharing their recyclables with the neighborhood."

Mary O'Connor has lived on Crystal Avenue for 25 years, she says the issue is that it should have been prevented. "They promised us that no garbage at all would be outside the plant, everything would be dumped and stored inside the plant. That hasn't happened," she said.

The General Manager of Buffalo Recycling Enterprises, Scott Bradley, says what caused this problem was the holidays. He says, "We had more material, less production hours, which results in more, unprocessed material. At the same time, we started seeing the extreme winds so that draws up the perfect storm in a negative sense."

Bradley said the only other time the pile reached outside the facility to where it was a problem was in the summer when production broke down. He assures the residents that they are doing everything they can to clean out the trees and the rest of the debris.

He says if residents see crews cleaning, they may ask them to remove the trash from their yards.