A Denver Public Works garbage truck dumped trash-filled liquid on a residential street in the Bear Valley neighborhood that left homeowners with the lingering smell for around a week in mid-March, the homeowners said.
The garbage truck operator was caught dumping the liquid by local homeowner Karen Bautista’s doorbell camera. After seeing the putrid brown puddle, she and her husband thought the snowstorm had blown over a neighbor’s trash. But her .
“I was really appalled and shocked,” Bautista said.
The video, which was first reported by Fox31, shows the Denver Public Works employee pulling a lever on the side of the truck to release the liquid through a chute onto the street in front of Bautista’s home. The liquid was a combination of water, dirt and bits of trash, Nancy Kuhn, a public works spokeswoman, said.
“We apologize for that and we are talking to our employees,” she said. The truck operator will be reminded of Denver Public Works’ practice to dispose of liquid at landfills and transfer centers.
“What did we do? Did we offend this guy?” Bautista said. She added she would understand if it was an emergency and the liquid needed to be dumped for safety reasons, but Denver Public Works should have cleaned it up and warned their neighborhood of the smell right away.
After snow and rain storms, garbage trucks can fill with liquid that can hamper the truck’s operations, Kuhn said. This is the first time Kuhn has heard of this type of dump happening in her 20-year career. Denver Public Works dispatched a team to clean up the last bits of garbage yesterday when they were notified of the incident.
The smell reeked like “diaper juice” and “dog poop,” Bautista said. The liquid even discolored the asphalt street.
