Over the last two years and even up to today, there have been incidents of illegal garbage dumping at the Lt. Petrosino Park in Bensonhurst. The garbage is not the ordinary soda bottles, paper, tissue kind of litter as seen on the streets and parks. The kinds of garbage that someone or some people throw out is in large black garbage bags that are sitting by the entrance of the park. The massive amount of garbage consists of household waste, building rubbish, other types of debris and bulk items – sofas, mattresses and microwaves.
Nearby residents realize that someone threw out the garbage during the late hours of night because when they go to work the next day they see the pile of garbage that was not there the previous day. Volunteers/workers at the park are only there two times a week to tidy up the park by picking up trash from the ground. Salvatore, who volunteers to clean at city parks said, “I don’t know who threw it there. It is not part of my job to clean that. The Sanitation Department should do it.†The pile of garbage by the park entrance is not picked up weekly, so sometimes after a couple of weeks the garbage accumulates into a small hill.