Earlier this month, photos of a giant pile of trash outside a block of new restaurants on Beacon Street near St. Mary’s went viral on Brookline’s social media pages and caught the attention of a local TV news channel.
The spectacle earned quick attention from town officials, too, who fined the building owner $600.
Incidents involving restaurants tend to make headlines, but they only make up a small minority of the waste violations issued by the town, according to a Brookline.News analysis.
The biggest culprit? Apartment and condo buildings.
Data provided by the town via a public records request show that over the last two years, 71% of waste removal violations were issued to residential buildings with two or more units. Restaurants made up just 6% of the violations. The rest were at single-family homes (10%), mixed-use buildings (9%), office buildings (4%) and hotels (1%).
Given Brookline’s tough-to-control rat problem, it’s something town staff are keeping a close eye on.
“Typically with restaurant staff, there’s hands-on training for waste storage and proper handling,” said John King, a solid waste manager and environmental health supervisor at the Department of Public Works. “Multi-unit buildings have new renters that sometimes just don’t get the attention that they need to know how to store their waste properly.”
But at the end of the day, he says it’s up to property owners to comply with the town’s regulations.
By the numbers
From July 1, 2022 to July 1, 2024, the town handed out 448 waste removal violations, and collected $32,710 in fines. Most cases start off as warnings, and then the town starts fining if the violations are not addressed.
During the last two years, most of the repeat offenders were larger apartment buildings, almost all of them on Beacon Street.
One of them, at 1223 Beacon Street, is owned by Chestnut Hill Realty. The property’s 15 violations were tied for the most by any property during that two-year period.
Nearly half of those violations came during a two-month period in the fall of 2023. They were the result of a miscommunication with the company that the building owner hires to haul its trash., according to Sam Smart, a senior regional manager at Chestnut Hill Realty.
Waste piled up after a new hauler forgot to plug in a cord to a trash compactor on-site. Since the issue was sorted out, the property has only had one warning, relating to dumpster placement.
“We care about our residents and want to cooperate with the town. Everybody wants the same thing,” said Smart.
None of the owners of the other buildings with the most violations responded to a request for comment. They include 1578-1580 Beacon Street (15 violations), 1555 Beacon Street (10 violations), 235 Cypress Street (8 violations), and 1477 Beacon Street (7 violations).
Education plus enforcement
King says the DPW staff follows complaints from residents to find offenders, but they also have certain areas in Brookline, like Cleveland Circle, which are so-called “hotspots” they check on a weekly basis.
“We need everybody to do their part,” said DPW Commissioner Erin Chute. “I want to underscore the importance of really keeping trash containment areas neat and tidy, with tight-fitting lids.”
DPW staff hopes new bylaws put into place earlier this year will help, as well as the recent hire of Stephanie Aucoin as a new code enforcement program manager.
Aucoin and King sometimes have to get hands-on when investigating possible violations. In cases of illegal dumping, for example, they’ll scour waste for something like an Amazon box that might help them identify the culprit.
King, who previously spent 12 years riding the back of a garbage truck, says nothing he sees frightens him anymore.
Aucoin, on the other hand, is still getting used to it. She helped respond to the trash heap on St. Mary’s Court this month.
“The maggots, the flies, the smell, are just definitely not what you sign up for, but seeing the after photos makes it worth it,” she said. “You might lose your appetite after, but give it a few days and you’ll be fine.”