Illegal dumping in the D: Debris floods west side Detroit neighborhood streets

DETROIT (WJBK) - It's nasty alright - illegal dumping.
    
It's an ongoing problem in the Detroit and, it's spreading. Just as fast as the city cleans it up it piles up somewhere else.

"They come and clean it up but a week later it is back out there again," said Deborah Harris.

Or in this case, a few hours. FOX 2 showed you the eyesore that is Appoline near Elmira Thursday night. There were tires and trash. Construction and demo debris. Someone even ditched a boat here.

"The dumping is terrible," said Demia Doss. "This has been going on for hours and it is non-stop."

"You couldn't drive down that way - bottles and nails and tables, chairs, couches," Harris said. "It is a whole mess."

People who live nearby called FOX 2 desperate to get the street and the vacant lots around it, cleaned up. The city of Detroit picked up much of the mess Friday but says someone was right back at it soon after.

"It brings rodents," said Doss. "My nephew is going to Cass Tech and he had to walk past it to get to the bus stop."

About three miles away is another dumping ground. This one on Woodmont just south of Stoepel Park 2.

"It was '07, '08 when they found a body back there," said one resident. "Then you have drugs back there. They pull up back there and do their thing. I've seen prostitutes back there."

You'll see it all back there: from bodies to vice to trash and you can always find a boat in these places, too. Neighbors say a man torched an RV in what they think was an insurance job. But weirder than that - foundations to unfinished houses. There are about a dozen of them on Woodmont. 

"You've got basements over there, and vegetation growing up over it," said another resident. "That's another issue for dropping a body in there and nobody would ever know. Only way we find out if a body is back there is if we smell it."

The Land Bank Authority owns the parcels here but a spokesman did not know the backstory to the unfinished houses in the area.   The two streets and the dumping that define them are small examples of a longstanding problem in Detroit. And one the city is considering how to better address.