I.P. residents want 'eyesore' removed

Rudy and Mary Nuzzolo live in a two-family ranch with a manicured yard on Waterford Road in Island Park. They have a tight-knit Italian family and host big dinners and gatherings, especially when their five grandkids and three great-grandchildren come to visit.

The Nuzzolos have lived in this solid, middle-class neighborhood of neat front lawns and clean sidewalks, which stretches down Waterford and past Redfield Road, for 50 years. When they look out of the front window from their living room, which is adorned with family pictures, they can see parts of the bay, the children's park on the corner, the power plant that looms over it, and -— trash. Sometimes a pile of debris 8 feet or higher, directly across from the park at the Island Park Department of Public Works garage on Long Beach Road.

The debris — discarded mattresses, chairs, broken wood and other items — sits just off of the street, in a concrete recess on the DPW garage property, which the village uses to keep bulk trash until enough is accumulated to put in dumpsters and haul off to the dump.

“People always say how terrible it looks, especially when we have company over," said Mary Nuzzolo, whose home is several houses away. “It's disgusting, I never thought they'd put stuff there. It's a real eyesore, and this is not a run-down area. I want to stay here, I don't want to leave. But it's a real problem here.”

For the Nuzzolos and many other residents, the trash has become not just an eyesore, but a quality-of-life issue that they say has negatively impacted their neighborhood. Most parents won't take their kids to the park, residents say some people have trouble selling their homes and, overall, the debris simply blights the area.

“It's a disgrace," said resident Larry Davies. "People just dump so much stuff there.”

The debris comes not just from the village's bulk trash pickup, but from people who dump illegally, residents said. They have called on village officials to address the issue by stepping up its enforcement of illegal dumping and, at the very least, installing some sort of fence or barrier or planting trees to keep the mound out of sight — to no avail. They say that the problem is not the garage itself, but the trash and the illegal dumping.