MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A woman living in Memphis’s Oak Haven says the neighborhood has been having problems with illegal dumping in the area for decades.
“Anything around the house that they don’t want, they throw it away over here,” said Betty Hibbler. “It’s a dumping ground every week.”
Hibbler, a Oak Haven resident since 1979, says that people have illegally dumped garbage near the corner of Tchulahoma Road and East Raines Road for as long as she can remember.
“We do have a city dump that the people need to take this trash to,” she said. “It’s a disgrace to our neighborhood for them to dump all this trash over here.”
ABC24 cameras captured mattresses, tires, old toys, a couch, even a pile of rotting fish when they visited the site on Saturday, Aug. 31. Hibbler says it gets even worse than that.
“When you wake up and come down on Sunday mornings, you got a lot of trash on the road that’s not supposed to be there,” she said.
Hibbler said she and other neighbors have called 311 on several occasions and see City of Memphis garbage trucks routinely haul the trash away, only for it to pile up again the next week.
“We would like to have signs put out here or some kind of gate or something to deter them from coming over here because they’re dumping any and everything, we don’t know what’s over here,” Hibbler said.
The trash piles extend into the woods and across the road. And it isn’t the only thing people are leaving behind in the area.
“All these bullets over here, these gun shell casings, people will come and just do any and everything,” Hibbler stressed.
As far as deterrents in the area, there is at least one Memphis Police SkyCop camera next to the dump sight.
ABC24 reached out to Memphis Code Enforcement and they said they are aware that this spot is a problem for chronic illegal dumping. They will be sending an investigator there on Tuesday.