UPPER EAST SIDE — A month after the city swore to crack down on a swank high-rise for sloppily dumping its garbage on the street, angry neighbors claim little has changed at the Clermont on East 82nd Street.
"I've been walking around town for 15 years, and I can't even think of a situation when an entire street is filled up by one building's garbage," neighbor John Hart said.
"We are trying to go through the formal channels. We are trying to be patient, taking it step-by-step — but the problem continues unabated."
Concerns recently came to a crux on Jan. 23 when Hart told the Community Board 8 Sanitation Committee that the Clermont's refuse is routinely strewn all about the sidewalk. He also said claimed that the Clermont stashed uncovered trash in their building's courtyard — and that the practice had become an eyesore for neighboring residents.
While a representative from the Clermont denied any trash problem, Iggy Terranova, Department of Sanitation community liaison present at the meeting, sided with Hart.
Terranova promised to personally teach building managers how to properly stack trash — and vowed to ticket the Clermont if it didn't get its act together, he said.
Terranova now maintains, however, that progress is being made.
"They were putting it out early — earlier than the [4 p.m.] allowed pickup time in New York City," he said. "I got them on track to putting it out at the right times and the right way. They're not taking up the whole entire street, which they were ding."
Terranova refused to say whether the Clermont — whose trash practices have previously gotten flak both from Sanitation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development — had received additional citations or violations since the CB8 meeting.
"We can't comment on that right now. They're trying their best, and we're willing to be nice and let them continue trying. Right now we're in the middle of being nice," he said. "It's a work in progress."
A Sanitation spokesperson, who previously furnished DNAinfo.com with a list of violations, did not immediately respond to a request for additional such information.
Asked at what point Sanitation would stop "being nice," Terranova said such a decision would be "situation by situation," but assuring "if it's not done properly, they'll get a ticket. If it's done properly, they won't get a ticket."
This has done little to put Hart at ease.
"The huge volume of garbage put out along the length of York Avenue in a highly disorderly manner continues," he said. "You walk by it, you feel like you're in a garbage dump."
