The parks department has used a city-owned Bronx lot as an unofficial garbage dump for decades, and locals say the stench has grown so horrendous it’s made a nearby greenway all but unbearable to traverse.
The trash mountain occupies the southern end of the parks department’s Bronx headquarters, which is named Ranaqua, meaning “End Place” in Reckgawank Algonquin. The facility is nestled between the Bronx River Greenway, the Bronx Zoo monorail and the MTA’s East 180th Street subway yard.
City officials said the department has used the lot as an area to store garbage collected from all the borough’s parks since at least the early 2000s. The waste is taken there before it’s picked up by garbage trucks. But it often sits out in the sun long enough to visibly rot. On a recent afternoon, flies were teeming over spoiled food in the pile, which was also filled with old mattresses, destroyed mopeds and other rancid detritus.
The pile is also filled with rat burrows, and its smell on a hot day is strong and foul enough to make some passersby on the adjacent greenway gag. It’s turned an idyllic Bronx greenspace into a blighted area abutted by what’s essentially an unregulated waste transfer station…