Gambit: Council candidate JP Morrell describes revolting conditions as temporary trash hopper: ‘Vermin are everywhere’
BY SARAH RAVITS I Sept. 17, 2021 - 5:55 pm
Council at large candidate and former state senator JP Morrell on Friday spent the day as a temporary trash hopper while the current City Council grilled Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration over the mounting crisis of uncollected waste.
He said he wanted to see firsthand how bad the problem is as officials scramble to figure out how to remove festering garbage — some of which pre-dates Hurricane Ida — from neighborhoods across the city.
Morrell joined Baton Rouge activist Gary Chambers and council candidate Oliver Thomas, who is running for the District E seat, along with District D candidate Kevin Griffin-Clark for pickup. Morrell said the group initially wore “regular” cloth face coverings and gloves but switched over to respirators after they immediately began gagging from the sickening conditions.
Chambers, who ran for Congress earlier this year, provided a truck and an industrial trailer, and the group collected putrid trash on the ground that was overflowing from bins from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
Morrell says he saw vermin “everywhere,” and warned that the rotting trash is becoming a public health crisis on top of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During Friday’s council meeting, constituents submitted public comments and complained of becoming ill. One woman said her neighborhood smelled so bad that it had significantly worsened her allergies, and that she had stopped going outside.
“As we went through the layers of trash, it was like rings on a tree,” Morrell says. “The stuff on the bottom [layer] was just atrophied —it was like the circle of life had taken over.”
One takeaway is the “massive” scope of the problem. “We would do maybe six or eight blocks, and the entire truck would be full,” he said.
He said overflowing bags of garbage had been sitting out for so long they disintegrated in their hands. “Where is the sense of urgency?” he asked.
He is critical of both the council and Mayor Cantrell’s office for not acting quickly enough to solve the growing crisis — and for contracting companies paying insufficient wages to laborers.
“We do not give hoppers the respect, the honor and the pay they deserve,” Morrell said. “When you dig into this trash, it’s a public health hazard. Between rodents and vermin and flies and maggots, this is the stuff in other countries where you would have a breakout of a disease, like cholera...I saw things I cannot unsee.”
This story has been updated to include the time frame.