By Christina Pazzanese, Boston Globe

3/23/08 - With the warm weather on the way, all tipster Wilfred McCalla wants to know is: Who is keeping an eye on the trash that piles up along the Southwest Corridor, especially at a busy playground in Jamaica Plain?

"The single trash can at Johnson Playground ball field has been full to overflowing for the last month," McCalla told GlobeWatch in an e-mail sent in late December. McCalla writes it has been unusually difficult to figure out which city or state agency to alert about the problem.

First there was an e-mail to the state parks agency; "no response," writes McCalla. "Then a message left on DCR's Community Relations Group Line: 617-626-4973 - no response." Eventually, McCalla did reach someone. "I was referred to the Southwest Corridor Park telephone number. The person who answered there said it was the responsibility of the MBTA to empty the trash cans. To be even more enterprising, I sent an e-mail to the MBTA's Cleanliness Complaint Form only to get an e-mail from the postmaster@haymarket.mbta.com informing me that there was a 'delivery failure' for the e-mail."

Though the several trash barrels in the playground and ball field area appeared fairly empty during a visit by a Globe reporter last week, photos McCalla sent showed a mountain of trash spilling out of a barrel onto the ground earlier this winter.

"OK, DCR - can you create a customer service hot line that assures follow-through similar to Boston's mayor's hot line, rather than just passing us off to various sub-departments?" asks McCalla. "It's way too confusing to know which is a city versus DCR park, let alone which department at DCR! Trust me - all I want is to get the trash emptied and the multiple bags of dog feces picked up that have been left all over the field! Maybe add extra trash cans?"

The state responds

"It's complicated," said Wendy Fox, a spokeswoman for the Department of Conservation and Recreation, of the Southwest Corridor stewardship. "While the MBTA owns the land, the DCR is charged with the care and control" of the nearly 5-mile-long park, which stretches from the Back Bay MBTA station to the Forest Hills station, she said. "We do everything except the trash barrels and picking up litter." The T is in charge of that, said Fox.

"There have been problems" with the overflowing trash barrels at Johnson Playground, said MBTA spokeswoman Lydia Rivera. But the situation seems to be improving of late, a fact McCalla confirmed in an e-mail last week. The T is monitoring the contracting firm that's responsible for the trash barrels at that park, to make sure they're being emptied at least twice a week, she said.

As the park gets busier, Rivera said the firm will probably need to do "more frequent" pickups. Park users should call the MBTA's customer service hot line at 617-222-3200 to report trash problems in any T-managed park, she said.

The DCR does have a hot line similar to the mayor's, said Fox. Anyone with non-trash-related maintenance complaints about DCR parkland should call 617-626-4973 "and we'll get the word out to whoever's in charge of that park," said Fox.

WHO'S IN CHARGE
Daniel A. Grabauskas, general manager
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
10 Park Plaza, Suite 3910
Boston, MA 02116
617-222-5215 

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