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A new city ordinance signed into law Thursday will allow the city to cite owners of vehicles if their cars or trucks are involved in illegal dumping.
Images captured by private citizens with their cameras, as well as city and other surveillance cameras, can be used as evidence in an illegal-dumping case, according to Bill 64.
Fines will range from $500 to $2,500, the mayor said.
The ordinance goes into effect July 1, but photos and videos have already been coming into the city Department of Environmental Services, which will enforce the ordinance, said Tim Houghton, its deputy director.
The ordinance, however, does not focus on photos of the perpetrators because often it is difficult to pinpoint exactly who it is, but rather focuses on capturing the action of moving the items from the vehicle to the sidewalk and the license plate, Houghton said.
He praised the new ordinance because “all we can do right now is cite the adjoining property owner, and that’s not the one who should be cited for the dumping.”
It “helps us go after the people who are creating the problem. If they dump in front of another person’s property, we can now go after the right people.”
He said by going after the owner or lessor of the vehicle, “even if they weren’t driving it, they’re responsible, kind of like a parking ticket.”
The mayor and city Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga, who authored Bill 64, and Councilman Joey Manahan signed the new ordinance Thursday in Chinatown, where there has been a long-standing problem with illegal dumping along city sidewalks.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the city is going to put up cameras around Chinatown and hopefully catch people. In more remote hot-spot
areas, he said, “We can put up cameras temporarily in different places, and we’ll be watching and waiting.”
Chu Lan Schubert-Kwock, president of the Chinatown Business &Community
Association, said of the new ordinance, “We need it.”
She said legitimate businesses in Chinatown are often blamed, but it is illegal vendors who leave their garbage on the sidewalks, others from elsewhere who pile on their garbage and homeless who pick through the bags and boxes that create a huge mess.
Fukunaga said her constituents in Makiki Heights and Tantalus involved in cleanups complained about an increasing amount of tires, refrigerators and furniture being dumped, and suggested catching the perpetrators who use their vehicles. This prompted her to introduce the bill, which was approved 8-0 by the City Council.
In the past, police or a city inspector had to witness the violation, which usually occurs when no one is around, and property owners were often cited for the actions.
The ordinance says the registered owner of the vehicle shall not be presumed to be the operator or user
of the vehicle for the violations when the vehicle or
license plates have been
reported stolen prior to the violation.
Manahan said the new ordinance gives residents who live by hot spots a way to go after those illegally dumping around their house. “Before, there was nothing they could do,” he said.
City officials tried to curb illegal dumping in Chinatown by providing yellow bags only to businesses authorized to have city trash pickup.
Schubert-Kwock said the city limited its provision of yellow bags to only 94 businesses, leaving many businesses without city trash pickup.
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