The intersection of 75th Avenue and Hawley Street in Oakland is in a graffitied industrial area flanked by apartments and recreational vehicles that double as homes. Piles of trash are heaped on the sidewalk — household and industrial waste, discarded toys, clothes, shopping carts, electrical gadgets, tires, furniture, and construction debris that rain has washed onto the road.
Under the elevated BART tracks, more garbage.
The area magnifies the illegal dumping problem that has been plaguing Oakland for years. Last year, 18 million pounds of illegally dumped trash were collected, according to city data. For a city with a population of about 440,600 people, that’s about 41 pounds per resident…