“Do the right thing. Don’t do this to us,” said Elvie De La Fuente. “Don’t be out here dumping trash like this. It’s not right.”
DALLAS — Residents in historic Winnetka Heights are on the lookout for suspicious construction vehicles plying alleys in their neighborhood after a dump truck load of roofing debris appeared this week in the middle of an alley near W. 10th Street and N. Windomere Avenue.
“Very angry. I am so angry,” said Elvie De La Fuente who lives near where the nearly four-foot-tall pile of asphalt shingles, nails, roofing debris, and garbage was dumped sometime late Wednesday night.
Neighbors reported hearing noises in the alley but the debris pile, entirely blocking the alley and access to several garages and driveways, wasn’t discovered until Thursday morning.
“Very disrespectful,” said De La Fuente. “That’s my feeling just so disrespectful for someone to just come and dump the trash out here.”
“Someone must have been really upset to dump it here,” said neighbor Wes Holloway who made the discovery and called 311 at the City of Dallas to ask for help. The City of Dallas Code Enforcement officers arrived Friday morning.
“This is a quiet, nice neighborhood and we don’t like to see stuff like this happen, obviously,” Holloway said.
A City of Dallas Code Enforcement officer told Holloway and De La Fuente that a City Marshal will investigate to determine if anything identifiable can be found in the debris pile that would indicate who dumped the roofing material.
Cleanup crews with the City of Dallas arrived with their own dump truck and heavy equipment to remove the debris Friday afternoon.
Ironically, across the street from the dumping site, Noel Cerda and his crew from Tolteca Contracting Group were hard at work on a complete remodel of a historic home in Windomere. Workers were removing shingles and tossing them into a dump truck in the driveway. Cerda says he was as upset as the Winnetka Heights neighbors when he heard about the illegal dumping. He says he fears it only serves to give all roofing contractors a bad name.
“I wouldn’t put ourselves in the same kind of category as those kind of guys, to be honest with you,” Cerda said.
He says that dumping a similar truckload of construction debris in a city landfill would only cost about $50 a ton.
“If they’re doing that, imagine what kind of corners they’re cutting on your home,” he said of the unknown construction crew that ditched the debris in the alley. “I wouldn’t trust them in my home. I wouldn’t trust the on my roof. I wouldn’t.”
There is metal flashing in the debris pile with pink and beige paint, perhaps a clue for investigators to figure out who is to blame. Elvie De La Fuente has a message for them.
“Do the right thing. Don’t do this to us,” she said. “Just do the right thing. Don’t be out here dumping trash like this. It’s not right.”
