Who Dumped an Apartment’s Worth of Trash at this Kalamazoo Park?
Well, this is disappointing.
Recently, Will Haenni, a meteorologist for WWMT, went live on Facebook to show a dreadful sight at Spring Valley Park, one of Kalamazoo's largest parks. I follow Will Haenni on Facebook so, I happened to catch it. Unfortunately, Will had been tipped off by a couple of different sources, including the Kalamazoo River Alliance, that a giant pile of trash had been dumped at the park.
He stopped by to take a look at it himself:
As he describes in the video, that wasn't a single trip with a single truck. Someone, most likely in the course of 24 hours, made a few trips to this park to offload their junk.
There were a lot of theories shared in the comment section. The most common one was that this was perhaps an eviction situation:
Looks too much for a single home. I'm thinking that's from several units. Wonder if a nearby apartment complex evicted a number of people - Kevin A.
Looks like an eviction and the landlord cleaned out the house, instead of disposing it correctly, they dumped it. So wrong. - Deb C.
With other comments pointing out how other paths could have been taken:
So unnecessary when Salvation Army would have picked up a lot of that for free to help people in the community and repurposed. - Audrey W.
In total, there were over 150 comments on Will's video. Most of them hope that whoever did this will be caught. According to Will's video, Kalamazoo Public Safety was contacted and, though it may take some digging, they'll hopefully be able to find some sort of personal information buried within the pile of trash. If you have any tips, you can find the contact information for the KPS here.
It's unclear who will be responsible for cleaning it up in the meantime.
Spring Valley Park, as mentioned above, is one of Kalamazoo's largest city parks. Comprised of over 186 acres, people visit this park to play disc golf, play on the playgrounds, take a walk around the lake, bike, fish, and so much more.
Learn more about the park, how to reserve space, and more here. And please, pick up your trash.