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By Chris Dwan

Last week, as I often do, I complained on social media (https://twitter.com/somershade1/status/1701725665936957598).

This time it was about a dumpster in the street at 371 Beacon Street in Somerville, MA. The builders have had it there for months, blocking a part of the intersection where the bike lane ends, where Beacon Street meets Oxford Street at an oblique angle, where Somerville becomes Cambridge, and a few feet from a sharp bend in the road leading to the complex intersection of Beacon Street and Somerville Ave.

While it doesn’t technically block the intersection — it does compress traffic at a crucial and heavily traveled spot. It’s not a great place for a dumpster.

I was surprised (as I often am) by the online response. It turns out that this particular dumpster and this particular construction site have been a source of irritation for a lot of folks over the years.  More on that at the end of this piece.

The Forever Project

The hotel at 371 Beacon Street was under construction when I moved to the neighborhood ten years ago. One day in 2022 I got curious and emailed the Department of Public Works (DPW), asking for copies of any permits and plans that the city had on file.

The staff at DPW are usually accommodating about scanning and emailing stuff, but this time they asked if I would mind coming up to their offices on Franey Street. When I got there, there were two overflowing manilla file folders waiting. I don’t blame them for asking me to pick out the bits and pieces of interest rather than scanning everything.

The original plans for 371 Beacon were approved by the Zoning Board of Appeals in January of 2010, more than 13 years ago.

A lot of water has flowed under a lot of bridges since 2010. Properties have changed hands, contaminated soil has been discovered and remediated, the green line extension has been constructed, the community path extension has opened, Beacon Street itself has been entirely rebuilt, and that’s not even mentioning the pandemic. It’s a long time for a place to be under construction. By contrast, the foundation permit for the Cambria Hotel on Somerville Ave. was issued in 2019 and it opened less than three years later.

Permits

It’s not well advertised, but it’s possible to independently look up permits, licenses, and even 311 tickets. Go to the city website and click on the menu item “for businesses” and then “licenses and permits.” This takes you to a landing page with yet another link to “CitizenServe,” the city’s “online portal for licenses and permits.” Once on CitizenServe, the “search” button leads to a form where you first select between “licensing,” “permitting,” and “constituent services” and then enter keywords, permit types and statuses, and so on.

A search for dumpster permits on Beacon Street returns fifteen hits at eight addresses — none of them at numbered higher than 205 Beacon. The builders just put a dumpster in the street knowing full well that the city would probably not do a thing about it, and they were right.

Just call 311

The usual response from the city to this sort of thing is to say that we should put in tickets with our 311 system rather than griping on social media.  People have been doing that for years.  On August 17 of this year, we see ticket 23–016530:

“The brown industrial dumpster has been here for years. Construction isn’t happening, there are no workers, no trucks, nothing. The dumpster is a hindrance to the bike lane and crosswalk. It blocks the view of pedestrians trying to cross the street, it causes a bottle neck during rush hour between the cyclists who have to navigate out of the bike path to go around it, and vehicles have to stop next to it- allowing little room for the cyclists. I’ve been at this intersection too many times and seen cars and cyclists tap each other. It’s not safe. Recently on a morning walk, I saw a contractor pull up in his truck and he unloaded at least six bags of garbage and other debris into the dumpster and drove off. The dumpster is being used by contractors who aren’t working on the building it’s in front of. It’s a hazard which, if it hasn’t already, is a major accident waiting to happen.”

Ticket 20–017171, from October of 2020, is particularly ironic for those of us who follow city politics. It asks the city to investigate unsafe conditions at the site and appears to be signed by “Councilor Katjana Ballantyne.” Nearly three years later, now-Mayor Ballantyne’s team finally closed the ticket, the very day after I started making a fuss online.

A Happy-Ish Ending

As I said at the beginning, a lot of people were annoyed by this dumpster for quite a while.  My posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Medium, got significant traction for such an incredibly local happening.  At my urging, a few other people put in 311 requests, and in short order the dumpster was drained (which I’m told smelled disgusting) and hauled away.

The dumpster is gone, and that’s a win, but this wasn’t a great way for things to go down.  The builders should have pulled a permit. Our inspectional services department (ISD) should have investigated repeated complaints. The police should have taken notice. The fact that it took online rabble-rousing to kick ISD into motion, despite multiple prior requests to 311, speaks to a gap in our civic processes.

The bright side is that individual activism actually works at the local level. I encourage everybody to speak up and insist on “better,” particularly when it’s something as glaringly wrong as a dumpster in the street.