NEW YORK — One week after a blizzard struck the city, the snowdrifts were melting Sunday but the mountains of trash were growing.
The Department of Sanitation announced it would resume garbage pickups today for the first time since the Christmas-weekend storm dumped 20 inches of snow on city streets. Trash collection was suspended while crews struggled to plow streets, said Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty.
“We are able to resume garbage pickups now that significant progress has been made in clearing away the aftermath of last Sunday’s massive blizzard,” Doherty said Saturday.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other city officials endured days of withering criticism for the city’s slow response to the storm.
Bloomberg visited some of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the snow and confessed the city’s handling of it was “inadequate and unacceptable.”
On one Manhattan block Sunday, sanitation trucks with front loaders were busy clearing snow, but garbage bins outside apartment buildings were overflowing, and bags of recyclable beer bottles and milk cartons were stacked helter-skelter along with discarded Christmas trees and wreaths.
“It’s OK in the winter,” said neighborhood resident Daniella Lekach. “I figure it’s cold enough that the rodents and insects aren’t going to gather.”
But Merilu Granato, who owns a midtown Manhattan pizzeria, called the piles of garbage “a very ugly scene.”
“We pay so much in taxes,” Granato said. “We didn’t expect whoever’s in charge to be so behind. . . . I’ve been here 30 years and never seen anything like it.”
