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Dumpers who are caught will be fined as much as $5,000 for a first offense.
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Chicago is installing 15 new high-resolution cameras to catch illegal dumpers in the act.
In 2016, the city spent more than $1.5 million to clean up illegally dumped construction debris, tires and other refuse. So now it’s investing about $100,000 to install cameras. Dumpers who are caught will be fined as much as $5,000 for a first offense.
The Chicago Sun-Times has more:
Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Charles Williams said the fines may help pay for the cameras, which he hopes will also deter dumpers all together. So far in 2017, he said, the city has recovered 4,000 truckloads of tires.
The cameras began going up about a month ago. The city has already used them to file two cases in court.
“We are not your sewer,” Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) said. “We are not your garbage dump here, on the West Side of Chicago.”
Williams and Department of Public Health Commissioner Julie Morita noted the waste piles can become breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus.
“People are dumping not just tires but trash,” Morita said. “Rodents, pet rats — they grow and they congregate in those areas. It’s the same areas where we have kids and families.”
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