BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Buffalo’s Tuesday and Wednesday trash pick-ups were canceled due to the cold weather and will not be rescheduled later this week. The City’s DPW will delay service for holidays, so why not now?
Eric Bockstahler, who lives on Buffalo’s West Side, was surprised to learn that the trash pickup in his neighborhood was not delayed by the weather, but completely canceled for the week.
“I thought ‘Well this is unacceptable,’” Bockstahler said. “Of course there’s confusion. We feel left out, we are the West Side right.”
According to the Buffalo Department of Public Works, any household that normally has their trash collected on Tuesdays or Wednesdays will not have service this week, because of fears of having workers outside in the severely cold temperatures earlier this week.
As Eric pointed out to me, when service is delayed because of a holiday like Christmas or New Year’s Day, the service is restored almost immediately.
“We didn’t put it out till the following day, the following day they came and got it, so I know they have the ability to do it, let’s put it that way,” Bockstahler said.
I took Eric’s questions directly to Buffalo DPW Commissioner Nate Marton.
Q: “This is treated differently than a holiday, like Christmas or New Year’s, where things are just delayed by one day, why is that?
Marton: “The issue in this case, was that there were two days that were projected those really cold temperatures, and as we know, those temperatures did kind of hold, and it was really that cold. When we have two days in a row, that would shift everything to two days off. So a delay would have been picking up on a Saturday and picking up on a Sunday, so that impact from an operational standpoint had us at a risk of delaying into the following week, and we didn’t want to do that at all.”
Marton told me he’s willing to work with the families that would have more trash than normal.
To stay up to date with your trash collection days, you can sign up for ‘BUFFALERTS’ by texting your zip code to 38276.
