Waste Management company finding large quantities of red paint in commercial dumpsters

Republic Services says someone or someones are dumping large quantities of red paint in commercial dumpsters and it's causing quite the challenge.

"We have had several different routes within Trumbull, Mahoning County that have red paint in the commercial front load cans," Ron Ogg, Operations Supervisor for Republic Services says. "We don't notice it until after the paint has already worked its way through the truck and started spilling out the tailgate.

Ogg says the spilling of red paint has been going on for about four weeks on four different routes and hitting about five trucks a week and it's no small amount.

"We can't pinpoint the location because the paint just working its way through the truck so we don't know it is in there until it starts leaking out," Ogg says. "It would have to be in excess of somewhere between 25 and 50 gallons of paint to be leaking out to leave the puddles that we're leaving coming out of the tailgates."

The cleanup process is slowing down services because they have to break off the route early, diaper up the truck to keep it from leaking and use what's called pig mats to clean up the spill.

A spill that Ogg says could create an environmental hazard.

"When it spills out in the road, the chemicals that are in the paint get into the waterways which gets into the sewer which then has to be taken out and I don't know if the water treatment plants are equipped to take all those chemicals that are in that paint out," Ogg said.

Ogg is urging people to be vigilant if they see any unusual activity around their dumpsters.

"If you see somebody that is not supposed to be around your dumpster, ask them, if you don't feel comfortable asking them, take a picture of the truck or van or whatever they have there, get a license plate number and you can forward that to us or YPD because we did call them this morning and did let them know so they can start investigating it and find out who is perpetrating all this paint everywhere," Ogg said.