Bed-Stuy Garbage Mountain Draws Illegal Dumpers Of All Kinds

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Truckloads of noxious trash are being illegally dumped on a Bed-Stuy corner dubbed “Garbage Mountain,” according to the local sleuth determined to level the heap.

A crew of men have been adding bags of food waste to the Talmud Torah D'nitra’s garbage pile on Lafayette and Bedford avenues, video shows, and Bed-Stuy resident Jeffrey Thomas believes they are to blame for the stinking trash drawing hoards of rats, he said.

“There’s an organized racket that is dumping garbage in front of the school,” said Thomas. “The rabbit hole has gotten much deeper on this issue.”

Thomas has spent weeks trying to find the cause of the massive garbage pile that draws “a river of rats” to his block and has a stench powerful enough to penetrate his home, three buildings down. His investigation, which Thomas is tracking on Instagram, recently uncovered evidence that disproved his initial theory, that the neighborhood yeshiva was to blame for the garbage.

Thomas met Wednesday with the Talmud Torah D'nitra school principal who told the amateur investigator, “It’s not our mountain,” said Thomas.

“We have enough problems in our community,” said Thomas, paraphrasing the principal, “without p---ing off our neighbors with garbage.”

The principal then shared video of a team of men who arrive late at night with a box truck full of trash they throw onto the pile and abandon.

Thomas’ investigative fervor has not yet led him to examine the contents, but judging from the stench (which he described as “blech”) and the rats, he believes the bags contain food from a city restaurant that thinks its paying the men to take the waste out of state.

“It’s very expensive to get garbage picked up,” Thomas explained. “So they leave it for the Department of Sanitation to pick up and the taxpayers to pay.”

Thomas’ investigation also led him into a Dunkin’ Donuts on Lafayette and Nostrand avenues, where he found suspiciously similar stinky trash, which owners told Thomas was not theirs.

“It’s the same racket,” he said. “They want to make it look like residential.”

The yeshiva principal also shared video of a local man dropping off a mattress and an oven, bulk items that New Yorkers are supposed to schedule appointments with the Department of Sanitation to remove, city law states.

And another unhelpful local can be seen dumping the contents of his bladder on the bags.

“People pee on it all the time,” said Thomas. “Anything that goes wrong, goes wrong.”

Talmud Torah D'nitra promised to clean up the area and build a new, completely covered shed that will keep rats and snow out, said Thomas.

And Brooklyn Borough President’s office and City Speaker Corey Johnson have both promised to investigate the matter further.

Thomas ultimately hopes he and his neighbors will be able to collect evidence that they can take to police to track down the illegal dumpers.

“We have this problem,” said Thomas. “It’s been going on for a very long time and obviously we just want it to stop."