An ‘unofficial county dump’. Piles of garbage growing in Modesto park

Parts of Legion Park, which itself is part of Tuolumne River Regional Park, are becoming “an unofficial county dump,” said a Modesto Fire Department battalion chief who also leads a volunteer group dedicated to protecting local recreational trails and waterways.

Darin Jesberg was battalion chief when an MFD hazmat crew went to Legion Park on Aug. 23 to check on three 55-gallon drums of an unknown substance that had been dumped in a field there. Testing of the residue found no hazard, he wrote in his incident report, and a solid-waste crew was notified to schedule removal of the drums.

But Tuesday, they lay there still, joined by a tarp covered with a pile of broken glass. Strewed among the trees next to the field were pieces of clothing, cardboard, plastic, storage tubs and more. And along Legion Drive through the park was all manner of rubbish: tires, child safety seats, broken furniture, blankets.

“This area of Legion Park has become an improvised dumping ground, which is quickly becoming a sanitation and fire safety issue,” Jesberg wrote in last week’s incident summary.

Jesberg, who founded the Dry Creek Trails Coalition, said waste in the parks along waterways has been a problem for years, but there’s been an uptick within Legion Park. Some of it is because of increase in the number of people who don’t have homes, he said, but “it appears it’s bigger than just personal waste. Definitely there are people who know they can get away with backing up their cars or trucks and dumping stuff.”

Gwenda Campbell, who’s lived for about a month and a half in a wooded gully in the park’s Mary Grogan Grove, said she and many of her fellow homeless are fed up with the dumping. The public is quick to blame them for the refuse, she said. But while many homeless aren’t good about keeping their encampments clean, she said, they’re clearly not the ones pushing barrels, mattresses and tires off the backs of trucks.

Campbell said much of the dumping is done by people who offer to cheaply haul away household waste. While a resident might think it’s being taken to a landfill, the hauler just dumps it in the park, saving himself time and money, she said.

She said anyone who lives in the park or visits it and sees waste being dumped needs to take photos. Get shots that include a license plate and send them to the police, she urged.

Cleaning Legion Park and attracting recreational use is a complex problem, and the effort to do so is multi-pronged, involving government and community partnerships. “It’s one of these things where everybody — environmental services, police, parks, fire — is working to keep these areas for families and children, not for illegal activity,” police Lt. Steve Stanfield said.

His department regularly works on problems like criminal activity including sex trafficking and drugs, as well as illegal camping and dumping, Stanfield said. Officers provide security for city parks crews that are “met with hostility” when clearing out homeless encampments, and for volunteers doing cleanup for the Dry Creeks Trails Coalition and Operation 9-to-99.

Some of the uptick in homelessness in Legion Park, Stanfield said, likely is because government and community groups have become more engaged and proactive in areas like Graceada, Enslen, Mono and Beard Brook parks. The big-picture aim is to not just react to homelessness but come to a resolution, he said, but in the meantime, “Where do I go if I’m homeless?”

Modesto Environmental Services Supervisor Duane Becker says his staff, too, has worked with the Dry Creek coalition and 9-to-99 because his department’s focus is on stormwater and the water quality of the creek and river. “We’ve seen over the last number of years high hits on fecal coliform (generally originating in the intestines of warm-blooded animals). ... From the state water board perspective, they want us to investigate the causes of the high bacteria.”

Meanwhile, a “new trash assessment ordinance coming about from the state” calls for a substantial reduction along waterways, Becker said. His staff will be looking at what’s being carried by storm drains and what appears to originate with illegal camping.

What makes much of Legion attractive to both illegal dumpers and illegal campers is that it’s “an undeveloped park site that we don’t have a lot of funding for,” said Kelly Gallagher, the city’s operations manager for parks.

Parks staff discs the grassy area between Hillside and Legion drives three or four times a year, depending on the weather, he said, and participates in periodic cleanups with Love Modesto and the local Hispanic Youth Leadership Council chapter. “We just don’t have the staff to maintain it regularly.”

The city has strung metal cable along concrete posts to keep vehicles from pulling in and dumping waste, Gallagher said, only to have thieves cut and take it. He’d like to keep areas fenced off to vehicles, “but that’s why we’re hesitating to even put more money into it.”

This story was originally published August 28, 2018 at 3:52 PM.