HOUSTON – In a matter of hours, KPRC 2 was able to mobilize city resources to clean up an illegal dumping site in Houston’s South Park neighborhood in just a few hours.
Residents had been battling the eyesore for months, reaching out to the city through 311, but had seen little to no action until KPRC 2 intervened.
The site, located at a former Family Dollar on Airport Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, had become a dumping ground for a variety of waste, including furniture, construction materials, and other debris. Homeowners, led by Travis McGee, president of the South Park Super Neighborhood, expressed frustration over the ongoing issue.
“It could be a lot of different people. But all of those people, if they’re doing this, they don’t care about the neighborhood,” McGee stated. “So, whoever’s doing it, I don’t care who it is. The city got to do a better job of enforcing illegal dumping.”
City Council Member Carolyn Evans-Shabazz echoed these sentiments, acknowledging the persistent nature of the problem.
“If we could just get the community and the people coming from outside the community to cooperate, we could perhaps keep all of District D clean,” she said.
To address the issue more effectively, Evans-Shabazz is working with community partners to install surveillance cameras to identify those responsible for the illegal dumping.
In a statement, the Department of Neighborhoods share how the city has address the property owners. “The Department of Neighborhoods abated and placed a lien on the property in September of 2023 in response to a resident’s report. In 2024, the enforcement responsibility for illegal dumping transitioned to the Solid Waste Department, which abated the property in June 2024 and is currently in the process of addressing it again,” they noted. “The Department of Neighborhoods is coordinating with the Solid Waste Department to place a lien on the property for the work performed to recover taxpayer funds used for cleanup.”
In addition to the immediate cleanup, plans are underway to implement more permanent solutions, such as chain fencing.
