Crews spent hours picking up trash this morning after a storm Tuesday night swept away garbage bins and flushed their contents into a park in southeast Denver.
Soggy trash was scattered across areas of Crestmoor Park, near East Alameda Avenue and Monaco Parkway, and garbage bins sat scuffed in front of surrounding homes.
Jesse Medina was one of three Denver Parks and Recreation employees who started collecting the trash at 6 a.m.
“It’s mind-boggling,” Medina said.
Most of the trash and recycling was strewn across the north and southwest parts of the park. In the seven years Medina has worked for the city, he has never seen anything like this, he said.
Janet Warren, who lives near the park, said Wednesday morning is trash day for the neighborhood. Several residents probably did not have time to grab their trash cans before they were washed away Tuesday night.
“They were swept down the road,” Warren said. “I had to go collect my trash cans this morning.”
Some residents said they found their trash cans more than a block away from their homes.
For the past 30 years, Warren has walked in the park almost every morning with her walking group, she said. No one in the group said they could remember a garbage day quite like this.
Most of the debris was old newspapers and other recycling, Medina said. Dozens of large garbage bags were piled on the edge of the park waiting for pick-up.
Medina said he did not think that anything hazardous was washed into the park.
Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794 or jsteffen@denverpost.com
