By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
UPPER EAST SIDE — It's one of the greenest streets in Manhattan, but not because of avid gardeners: piles of discarded Christmas trees still lingered along E. 80th Street between Second and Third avenues as of Tuesday afternoon.
The Department of Sanitation's originally scheduled Christmas tree collection from January 3 through 15 was hindered by the blizzard and successive snowstorms that also left residents with mounds of garbage cluttering their sidewalks.
"I can't believe there are still Christmas trees out on the street," said New Jersey resident Denise Stieber, while strolling her almost 2-year-old grandson who lives a block away. "Better to pick up the garbage than the Christmas trees, if you had to choose. There is a lot less garbage than there was last week.”
Residents and workers said the block's garbage as of last week had been piled higher than the cars and were happy to see those piles gone.
"The trees don't bother me. You can leave them out a couple of years and they'll turn into mulch," said Lenny, who works on the block and declined to give his last name.
But he hasn't been happy with the city's overall handling of the snow. "The city is going to hell," he said. "We don't raise taxes. We just raise fees."
Stieber, who said she was a big fan of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was more forgiving: "It's hard to do everything everywhere and [the city] just doesn't have the wherewithal."
A Department of Sanitation spokesman said that regular collection of garbage and trash has resumed and that "select trucks" were on the streets picking up Christmas trees, which can't be sent to incinerators with the rest of the garbage.
"Our field officers are aware of it," DSNY spokesman Matthew LiPani said of the curbside trees. "They're going to get picked up."
He couldn't specify when they'd be gone but said supervisors were scouting locations. "People should be patient," he added.
Though this block still had its firs, residents noticed a big mound of trees at the corner of First Avenue and East 80th Street had disappeared by Tuesday afternoon.
