Dumping of trash and tires is such a common problem in East Cleveland that even the city government has been cited for it.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Health declared the city’s service yard to be a public health nuisance in late January after finding old tires, scrap metal and a large heap of yard waste mixed with trash at the Eddy Road site. The dumping had been going on for years, according to health board staff.
Tires were strewn around the yard rather than being covered — making them potential mosquito breeding grounds if they filled up with water, the board wrote in a February letter to the city’s service director. The board recommended having fire suppression at the ready; waste piles generate heat as they break down and can be at risk of igniting.
“All of these items need to be removed from the ground and disposed of properly,” board of health program manager Jeff Hanchar wrote in the letter. “Discontinue the practice of bring[ing] solid waste to the service yard.”
East Cleveland Mayor Sandra Morgan said the city met with county health officials last week and plans to have the service yard cleaned up.
“The long and the short of it is we’re working on it,” Morgan said in a phone interview on Monday. “And yes, we have a plan.”
Signal Cleveland visited the service yard last week and on Wednesday of this week. There appeared to be less debris than the board of health photographed in January — but tires and scrap were still scattered around the property.
A large heap of trash sat next to piles of yard waste at the end of a long driveway. At the back of the grounds were at least two discarded large recycling bins for clothing. One had been torn apart, clothes spilling out. Part of the chain-link fence along Eddy Road had fallen over.
East Cleveland asks Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for help
The littered city service yard is one example of how financially strapped East Cleveland has struggled to provide a basic service to its residents: in this case, keeping the city clean.
It’s a sizable job in a small suburb that has long been mistreated as a place for offloading unwanted debris. As the city cleaned up trash around town, it took that refuse back to the yard on Eddy Road, just across the street from neighborhood homes.
“Quite honestly, the refuse piled up quicker than we could get rid of it,” said Morgan, who took office this year after serving a short stint as interim mayor last year.
East Cleveland has applied for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s no-fault tire cleanup service, according to the EPA. The other trash would go to a waste transfer station maintained by Rumpke, the city’s garbage collector, Morgan said.
Morgan said that the city would do a better job enforcing its own rules against dumping, including making property owners pay for cleanup plus a 10% administrative fee for trash they’ve left on their land.
A spokesperson for the county health board wrote in a brief statement that city and health officials’ had a “productive” conversation recently “to discuss next steps.”
“We trust that the city will soon be moving toward compliance and remediation,” the spokesperson, Kevin Brennan, wrote in an email.
While the Ohio EPA reviews the city’s cleanup application, it will be “working with the city and the local health department to ensure scrap tires stored on the property are properly managed,” spokesperson Bryant Summerville told Signal Cleveland in an email.
A longtime East Cleveland trouble spot for trash
The Eddy Road site has served as a dumping ground for more than a decade. It used to be the city’s waste transfer station, health board staff said at a recent meeting.
In 2015, when a private trash company operated on the property, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Environmental Crimes Task Force found 30,000 to 40,000 tons of debris piled there, News 5 Cleveland reported at the time. The Ohio EPA supervised the cleanup, Cleveland.com reported.
By 2020, trash was again piling up at the service yard, board of health program manager Hanchar said at a January board meeting covered by Cleveland Documenters. He said he started issuing violation notices over the trash in 2022.
“There are just a lot of excuses on why they can’t get their workers to clean it up,” he said of the city.
Health board staff were concerned about mosquitos, the potential for fire and contaminated water leaching into the storm system and Doan Brook. Both the city itself and residents had dumped trash there, staff said.
One official even likened the dump to a “mini Arco” — a reference to a large demolition debris dump in East Cleveland that caught fire and cost the state $9.1 million to clean up in 2017.
The Ohio EPA pushed for the board of health to act. The public nuisance declaration could help unlock cleanup funding, staff said at the meeting.
The board’s February letter told the city to fix the broken fence and move community recycling bins off the premises “to deter the general public from entering the facility and improperly disposing of material.”
On the gate to the yard was a sign warning, in all capital letters, “No dumping. Violators will be prosecuted.”
