In theory, Thursday is trash collection day for Clare Braun and her neighbors along East Tabor Road in Northeast Philadelphia.
But the 56-year-old widow was not surprised to find her trash still piled in bags at the curb when she got home from work Thursday night.
"From the first of the year until the middle of April, I don't think we were picked up twice on time, and I'm being generous," she said. "It's gotten progressively worse, and I don't see any relief in sight."
Nor do many other Philadelphia residents who share Braun's exasperation over the city's waste-removal system. A critical shortage of disposal sites, a system overwhelmed by the load placed upon it and a city government at odds about how to solve the problems have transformed trash pickup from a routine city service into a chronic cause for complaint and consternation.
From the litter that swirls on eddy currents in Center City, to the debris- laden lots of North Philadelphia and Kensington, to the bags of household trash that lie uncollected along residential streets, there is evidence that Philadelphia is choking on its own refuse.
"Clearly, for this administration, this is one of the major problems - maybe the major problem - facing the city," Deputy Mayor John Flaherty said recently. "It affects us at every level, from the mom-and-pop grocery store that is struggling to pay its rising disposal costs to the person who's trying to persuade a friend to move to Philadelphia and is asked the question: 'Why is the city so dirty?' We have got to come to grips with this problem."
This week, the Goode administration is expected to embark on an aggressive campaign to win support for its latest plan for meeting the city's waste- disposal needs: building a $180 million trash-to-steam plant at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard to handle more than two-thirds of the city's residential trash.
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In announcing the project last month, Goode said the facility would help stabilize the city's long-term disposal costs and provide cheap energy to the imperiled Navy Yard without sacrificing the health of South Philadelphia residents, some of whom would live within a mile of its giant furnaces.
But the plan - Goode's third waste-disposal proposal since taking office - is already facing stout opposition from some environmentalists, potential plant neighbors and City Council members, a majority of whom voted in January 1985 against any solution that would require burning trash within the city limits.
