A mountain of refuse piled up in Monongahela’s Chess Park
MONONGAHELA – A state lawmaker’s roadside cleanup effort took a wrong turn, resulting in a sprawling pile of televisions and tires that continued to grow in size Tuesday morning in a city park in downtown Monongahela.
The effort of state Rep. Bud Cook that was announced at a City Council meeting April 11 was supposed to have involved roadside litter placed in plastic bags for pickup at Chess Park and other locations, Councilwoman Claudia Williams said.
“And then it hit Facebook,” Williams said Tuesday.
The publicity resulted in people cleaning out their basements and garages and taking items to the park at the corner of West Main and Seventh streets, city officials said.
“I can’t believe it got so big,” said Karla Roman, who lives nearby and watched Tuesday as the pile continued to grow in size by the minute. The pile was of such a size it obscured a large veterans monument. A photo on Facebook showed some of the junk leaning against a Civil War-era cannon.
Gov. Tom Wolf stepped into the problem later in the day and his office said the cleanup did not appear to have been “responsibly managed.”
“We have not spoken with Rep. Cook and we are not aware of any agreement to dispose of this waste prior to the event,” Wolf’s spokesman JJ Abbott said.
Abbott said Wolf asked the state Department of Transportation to work with Monongahela to quickly remove the waste from around a veterans memorial at the park, something that appeared to have already been completed Tuesday by volunteers.
Earlier in the day, Cook said he planned to appeal to Wolf to see what PennDOT could do about removing the pile.
Cook said he was more concerned about getting the pile of refuse out of Chess Park than he was about how the effort got out of control.
“I will have a full statement (today),” Cook said.
He did not respond to a message seeking comment about Wolf’s comments on the problem at the park.
Meanwhile, former Washington County District Attorney Steve Toprani, of Monongahela, who is seeking to unseat Cook in November, said a team came together Tuesday afternoon to make arrangements to have the pile hauled away.
State Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Carroll, also worked with the group, which brought Big’s Sanitation of North Belle Vernon, Westmoreland County, to Chess Park to begin removing the mess by 5 p.m.
Toprani said police blocked off Seventh Street in the area to allow the company and volunteers to place the items into large containers to be hauled away. The pile was too large to remove Tuesday night, and the work was to resume today, he said.
He said it had yet to be determined who would be responsible for payment of the hauling.
Monongahela Mayor Bob Kepics, in a Facebook post, said he had nothing to do with the cleanup effort; that it was a project of Cook, Williams and another councilman.
He also said the mess ended up becoming an invitation for people who don’t live in the city to add their TVs and tires to the pile.
“It was a great idea without much thought put into it,” said Monongahela police Chief Brian Tempest, adding PennDOT employees showed up at the pile Tuesday afternoon to take photos of the pile. Late Tuesday afternoon, a “no dumping” sign was placed among the discarded items.
Williams said she took full responsibility for the “poor choice” in making the park a drop-off location for the cleanup.
“The program was extremely successful and showed a dire need for a method of disposal for items such as you see at the park,” she stated in a Facebook post.