A colorful new mural by San Francisco artist Cameron Moberg was unveiled last month in the Bayview-Hunters Point District to bring attention to the problem of illegal dumping in the area.
A new mural was unveiled last month in the Bayview-Hunters Point District to bring attention to the problem of illegal dumping in the area. The mural was commissioned by the San Francisco Department of the Environment. Photo Camer1.com
By Bill Picture
Published: March, 2016
A colorful new mural by San Francisco artist Cameron Moberg was unveiled last month in the Bayview-Hunters Point District to bring attention to the problem of illegal dumping in the area. The mural, which is near the intersection of 3rd Street and Palou, was commissioned by the San Francisco Department of the Environment (SF Environment), which hopes the eye-catching mural will encourage residents to keep an eye out for illegal dumping and report violators using the City’s 311 hotline and app.
While the mural specifically calls out the environmental impact of dumping used motor oil, which can contaminate groundwater and end up in the Bay, SF Environment spokesperson Sraddha Mehta said that oil is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dumping.
“It’s pretty appalling,” she said. “Anything and everything you can think of gets dumped in this neighborhood. Used motor oil is just a starting point for us, to raise awareness of the bigger issue of illegal dumping.”
Mehta reports that San Francisco’s Department of Public Works (DPW) collected over 20,000 tons of abandoned waste last year—everything from unwanted furniture and old television sets, to biomedical waste and leftover paint and solvents, which contain harmful chemicals. She adds that between 2012 and 2014, DPW collected over 6,000 gallons of abandoned motor oil.
“And that doesn’t include the oil that was dumped directly onto the ground or directly into sewers,” she said. “This is a big problem, and this neighborhood is taking the brunt of it.”
A convenient target
Mehta says that most of the waste being abandoned on the streets of the Bayview originates far outside the neighborhood’s geographic boundaries. “A lot of it comes from outside of the City even,” she said.
While Bay Area cities offer a plethora of convenient and in many cases free ways for residents to dispose of landfill-unfriendly waste, businesses that generate a lot of this kind of waste are charged a disposal fee. Though the fee is modest, unscrupulous businesses haven taken to driving their waste to more remote areas to dump it and avoid paying for proper disposal. And remarkably and unfortunately, the Bayview’s desolate industrial areas and dead-end streets have become favorite dumping spots.
“It’s so unfair,” Mehta said. “The neighborhood’s already contending with so many environmental issues—multiple Brownfield sites, a sewage treatment plant, a former power plant and a Superfund site. And people are coming here in the middle of the night to dump their waste. That’s when a lot of this happens—in the middle of the night.”
Mehta added that some of the dumping is done by hauling businesses, who charge individuals and other businesses to take their waste away for proper disposal but instead dump it. “So the people that hire the haulers think they’re doing the right thing, but their waste ends up on some street corner instead.”
Though leaving behind a few quarts of used motor oil or some leftover paint on a street corner may seem like no big deal, the environmental impact is anything but. Should these materials spill or leak and end up in waterways, they harm water quality and quality of life.
“One gallon of used motor oil can contaminate a million gallons of drinking water,” Mehta explained.
Don’t forget that San Francisco’s water treatment plants are only intended to treat biological waste, so chemical contaminants that end up in gutters slip right past this line of defense. And any liquid that reaches sewers in outlying areas of the City, like Ocean Beach, isn’t treated at all because those sewers flow directly into the ocean.
But liquid contaminants aren’t the only waste of concern to the City, which spends over $4 million each year removing abandoned waste. Construction waste such as nails and broken glass, biohazardous medical waste and abandoned appliances, which contain toxic heavy metals and chorofluorocarbons, all pose serious health and safety threats. Even old furniture is dangerous if left behind, because it eventually attracts pests that use it as a breeding ground.
“And dumping attracts more dumping,” Mehta said. “That’s a proven fact. People see junk out on the street, and think it’s okay to do the same thing.”
Viewers are likely to notice that the tone of Moberg’s mural is much different than the other murals around town. Far from happy or uplifting, Moberg’s mural depicts angry sea animals scowling as oil is dumped into their watery home.
“They’re angry, just like the people in the Bayview are angry about what’s happening in their neighborhood,” Mehta said. “This is their home, and people aren’t respecting that.”
Moberg and SF Environment spent months talking to residents of the Bayview before a single brush touched the wall to ensure that its message was spot-on. And once designed, Moberg enlisted the help of local youth to help paint the mural. “Engaging the community was an important part of this project,” Mehta said.
But why art?
The mural is latest in a series of efforts made to address the problem of illegal dumping in the Bayview. Over the years, DPW has increased the number of trucks that patrol the neighborhood collecting abandoned items. They’ve also installed more signage to alert would-be dumpers of the consequences of their actions, and have even organized midnight stakeouts to try to catch illegal dumpers in the act.
SF Environment has done its share to make residents and businesses in the Bayview understand how detrimental dumping is to their health and well-being. Their field representatives regularly canvas the neighborhood, knocking on doors and explaining how to properly dispose of waste. And they encourage locals to be vigilant when it comes to protecting their neighborhood and report illegal dumping.
Still, the problem continues. “It’s a big problem, and there is no one solution,” Mehta said. “We have to attack it from every angle. And art is another angle. We’ve done brochures and flyers, but art speaks to people in a way that no brochure or flyer ever will.”
“This project hit close to home for me,” Moberg said. A San Francisco native, Moberg said he remembers hearing the parents of friends who lived in the neighborhood complain about the illegal dumping happening near their homes.
“So it makes me happy that I can use what I do best to raise awareness over an issue that directly affects people I love in the city I love.”
