On Saturday, March 21, San Diego’s District 9 and Mesa Colony held their second annual College Area Dumpster Day in hopes of clearing backyards and brushfire potential.
Despite a heat wave, residents filled nearly four dumpsters with old outdoor furniture, electronic waste, mattresses and yard scraps.
The event was supported by community members and city leaders alike, with the College Area Community Council, Fire Safe Council and Goodwill Industries helping to organize and volunteer at the event.
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera and his team were part of the six-person volunteer team helping residents unload their vehicles free of charge.
Bringing hefty trash to the landfill starts at around $70 in San Diego.
For organizers, this event is all about making clean streets an accessible reality for residents. In fact, the event also offered a free junk removal service with the help of some generous community members and their trucks.
“It wasn’t just a cleanup,” said Sue Grant of Mesa Colony. “It was a real across the board effort to get stuff out of people’s backyards.”
The biggest change this year, and something Grant says she is extremely proud of, is the addition of a green waste bin.
“We’re kind of spearheading moving in that direction with our cleanup events, providing green dumpsters so that people, if they’re able, they can start to clear their their green waste, dry brush leaves, dead vegetation, that kind of thing, from around their home.”
While today’s fire season seems to be year-round, many residents are preparing for peak fire risks that start next month.
The College Area is one of many neighborhoods in San Diego that exists in a “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.” Following the passage of a new state bill, all homeowners in this zone are required to clear all flammable brush within a five-foot radius of their home.
“We’re trying to be fire-conscious in the area because a lot of the residences are on the finger canyons along Mission Valley,” Grant said. “They need to clear around their homes so they’re not vulnerable because we’re in a high fire hazard zone. We realized that and we just want to make something like that available for people who want to be proactive and start clearing out vegetation around their homes.”
In the future, Grant hopes to be more proactive with advertisement and outreach to encourage participation from the many San Diego State University students who live in the area.
“Reaching out to kids who don’t have trucks to help them move things is not an easy thing to accomplish,” Grant said. “To me, in a perfect world, we’ll have dumpsters for all the neighbors who want to get rid of shrubbery and bush for Zone Zero, and we’ll have dumpsters that we’d love to see the students take advantage of, because they don’t want that stuff out there either.”
This event is just the first Dumpster Day of the year, with the College Area Community Council also hosting one just before the start of each school year to cater to students moving in and out of their leases.
“It ended up becoming a thing primarily because we have a lot of ADUs and mini dorms in the area, and we noticed that couches were cropping up, tables, couches, old furniture, things like that, in front of some of the ADUs and rental properties directly surrounding the College Area,” Grant said. “So there was a need to get this stuff picked up and tossed into dumpsters.
“Once a year is good, but twice a year is better.”
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