Recycling plant litters yards

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Blowing winds blanketed a South Buffalo neighborhood with garbage from a nearby recycling plant. A News 4 viewer tipped us off to the mess with a Report It photo.

On Friday it was very windy in western New York. The winds combined with recyclables from the holidays piling up outside Buffalo Recycling Enterprises resulting in neighboring Crystal Avenue having litter strewn from end-to-end. Plant workers are cleaning up, picking litter from the tops of trees, and working to prevent it from happening again.

"Trashy. That's the only word for it. I feel bad for anyone who's trying to put their house on the market. Who's going to drive down here and see this and want to buy in the neighborhood?" questioned Mary O'Connor, who's lived on Crystal Avenue for 25 years.

O'Connor says the wind often carries unwanted refuse down her street.

"And it comes down our street on a regular basis. But with Friday's very large gusts, 50-60 miles per hour, we got inundated with more than you can explain," she says.

The recycling plant told neighbors they would clean up even the trash stuck high up in the trees. But what O'Connor would like is a plan to prevent it from happening again.

The plant's general manager says the extra trash from the holidays piled up outside the plant's garage doors, which is even visible in satellite images. But he says that doesn't happen often.

The pile no longer extends outside. And they're working on a solution.

"Trust me; I understand the neighbors' concern. It doesn't look good down there and we appreciate their patience throughout the year so far. We want to be good neighbors. So we're going to look at everything we can to make sure this doesn't happen. It's just not something we want to see," says Scott Bradley, G.M. of Buffalo Recycling Enterprises.

"I wish them well. It's nice they're putting people to work. But this is not working for the neighbors," O'Connor says.

Plant workers cleaned up by hand and the plant hired a tree removal company with a bucket truck to clean the tall trees.

The plant serves just about every nearby community except the City of Buffalo and now gets recyclables from Pittsburgh and Canada. A couple ideas that have been mentioned include expanding the garage where the trash is dumped or adding netting like at a golf driving range that would catch the trash in the wind.