E-Mail
Print
tool name
close
Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009
Dirty job: Cleaning up years of garbage left by homeless underneath Bear Creek bridge.
Caltrans workers, covered in white jumpsuits and carrying pitchforks, removed years of garbage collected by homeless people living beneath a Bear Creek bridge.
Work began Monday morning and will continue today. Crews were cleaning out the garbage and other debris to increase water flow on Bear Creek as the heavy rains near, Caltrans spokeswoman Lisa Balcum said.
Crews were also out several years ago removing trash from the same area.
Merced Sun-Star - Garbage and debris scattered underneath the Bear Creek bridge on 16th Street. A Caltrans crew collected the garbage that was put in a truck and taken away. Cleanup will continue today.
Merced Sun-Star - Caltrans employees Bernardo Garcia, top left, and Matt Divird, top right, look on as Eric Thephaath, bottom left, and Jim Merriam fill another canvas full of garbage from underneath the 16th Street Bear Creek bridge on Monday.
Merced Sun-Star - Caltrans workers Eric Thephaath, left, Jim Merriam, middle, and Gabe Flores fill another tarp full of garbage and debris from under the Bear Creek bridge on 16th Street, where the homeless have been living.
Merced Sun-Star - One of the homeless living quarters underneath the Bear Creek 16th Street bridge will be demolished just like all the other garbage underneath the bridge. Cal Trans workers were tossing everything away, except what the homeless person had taken out and placed in another area.
They posted a sign Tuesday alerting the homeless about the cleanup to come. A California Highway Patrol officer was in the area to make sure the homeless people left.
The campsites beneath the bridges at Highway 59 and 16th Street reeked of urine and excrement in the morning. The five-man crew sprayed a sterilizing mixture of bleach and water on all the debris. The stinging bleach smell remained through the afternoon.
The homeless people living beneath the bridge moved belongings they wished to keep to an area farther down the creek. They moved from Caltrans' land to an area controlled by Merced Irrigation District.
The 16th Street homeless camps under the bridges are some of the messier ones in Merced. The camps along Black Rascal Creek are generally better maintained.
The Caltrans workers used pitchforks to pick up speakers, lawn chairs, flashlights and boxes. Using mechanical trash grabbers, they gingerly picked up syringes. They didn't touch any buckets with lids because they couldn't be sure what was inside. Those items will be disposed of separately.
"This bag stinks so much," one worker said as he tossed it into the garbage truck. "I don't know what's in there."
Workers at the scene weren't authorized to speak to the media. All communications were required to go through Caltrans' Stockton media office.
Balcum said she wasn't sure what, if anything, would be done to keep the homeless people from returning to the bridges and collecting more stuff. "Because of where it sits and how it sits, I don't now if we could put up any kind of barriers," she said.
Reporter Scott Jason can be reached at (209) 385-2453 or sjason@mercedsun-star.com.
Commenting is closed for this story
@Nyx.CommentBody@