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Parkersburg sets sights on major cleanups

Contract awarded to remove dumped items from six locations

By Evan Bevins 3 min read

PARKERSBURG -- The City of Parkersburg has agreed to a $38,000 contract with a local company to clean up half a dozen abandoned homeless encampments.

The contract includes sites off Emerson Avenue, at the western termination of Fairfax Street toward the East Street Bridge, off DuPont Road and near Hank Greenburg Field in south Parkersburg, Mayor Tom Joyce said. The areas are filled with clothing, appliances, tarps, wood pallets, bicycles, propane tanks, stuffed animals and more, with many items believed to have been stolen, he said.

City sanitation personnel and other workers have removed waste from such encampments multiple times over the last few years, but that's outside the scope of their normal duties, Joyce said.

"They signed up to pick up trash that was in a bag, in a can, at the end of the curb," he said.

J.C. Bosley Construction Inc. was the low bidder on the contract. Budget revisions approved this week by Parkersburg City Council allocated an additional $10,000 to the contractual services line item in the code administration budget to help cover the cost. The revision was listed for "litter mitigation services," but after looking at aerial photos of some of the sites, Councilman Chris Rexroad said that was an understatement.

"I know it's expensive, but the reality of it is they aren't going to get cleaned up otherwise," Joyce said during a council Finance Committee meeting Tuesday. "Some of these would take us a week."

Joyce said the encampment sites are unsanitary as well as unfair to residents who keep their property safe and clean.

The mayor said there has been an increase in homelessness and such encampments in recent years due to the influx of residential substance abuse treatment beds. Wood County has 22.6 percent of all such beds in the state, with more than 200 in Parkersburg, according to statistics from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.

Joyce said it appears the sites to be cleaned are abandoned. City workers have posted signs that they will be cleaned up.

The city has also resumed a trash pickup program with the help of inmates from the Parkersburg Correctional Center after a two-year absence.

"There were not any community service folks available to us from that program because of COVID restrictions," Joyce said.

Since the first week of April, inmates working along busy thoroughfares in the city have collected 210 bags of trash and 20 tires and returned four shopping carts to the stores where they belong. They also filled a garbage truck with material from under the Fifth Street Bridge, where people often sort and dump unwanted items left after hours at the Salvation Army thrift store.

"That's impactful," Joyce said.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com

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