Written with the help of AI from the grant agreement and application in the Oct. 28 City Commission agenda packet and the meeting video.
For decades, five lots on Delphos Avenue in Westwood have been one of Dayton’s worst illegal dump sites. Behind overgrown brush, people have left wrecked cars, appliances, tires, construction debris and bags of trash. Now the city has a state grant to clear it.
On Oct. 28 the Dayton City Commission accepted $88,512 from the Ohio Attorney General’s Shine a Light on Dumpers program to clean up 3012, 3100, 3106, 3114 and 3116 Delphos Ave. It’s the second year in a row Dayton has won the grant. Last year’s paid to clear another long-standing dump at 3800 Germantown Ave.
What the cleanup involves
City Manager Shelley Dickstein walked the commission through the plan. A contractor will take down the fencing around the site, haul away the trash, vehicles, RVs and boats, and run a dozer blade over the whole property to scrape off an inch or two of soil along with broken glass and other debris. Workers will clear all the vegetation except healthy trees, pull up old asphalt and concrete slabs, rough-grade the land, and seed and straw it. “It should be pretty stark before and after,” she said.
The city’s grant application describes the site as a hazard: tires that collect standing water and breed mosquitoes, broken glass and unstable piles that put children at risk, dense brush that shelters rodents, and debris that can leach contaminants into the soil. The lots are under a nuisance abatement order, which is what allows the city to clean up private property.
Why it took a grant
Public Works handles illegal dumping across the city, but the application says chronic, decades-old sites like this one are beyond what its staff and equipment can take on. Clearing Delphos Avenue with outside contractors frees city crews to work on preventing and responding to dumping elsewhere. The project is a joint effort of the city’s housing, waste collection, street maintenance, community engagement and sustainability offices.
Keeping it clean
Commissioners asked how the city will keep the site from becoming a dump again. Dickstein said clearing the brush removes the cover dumpers rely on, and that the city will look at signs from its sign shop and possibly a camera. Mayor Turner-Sloss, who said she was glad to see the project finally come forward, also asked about barriers like the ones used at other sites.
The property remains privately owned. Commissioner Beckham asked what happens after the cleanup. Dickstein said buying the land would mean finding money both to purchase it and to put it to new use, and none has been identified yet. For now, she said, the priority is getting the dump off the landscape.
Sources: the grant agreement and application in the Oct. 28 City Commission agenda packet, and the meeting video. More from that meeting: Dayton City Commission, Oct. 28.
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