Dumpster

Judge Joseph DiPietro has closed the lid on the case of the uncovered dumpster involving the Springfield school board and the Springfield Township health officer. On Wednesday, the judge found the school board guilty of violating the township ordinance that requires all trash dumpsters to be covered, but he waived the fine of $125.50. "We are satisfied with the outcome," said John Bay, school district treasurer, who represented the district at the hearing. "It was obvious from photos (taken by the health officer)

The remains of a newborn girl with the umbilical cord still attached were found yesterday in a dumpster behind a pizza parlor on the Black Horse Pike in Washington Township, Gloucester County, police said. The body was stuffed in a plastic trash bag and was lying at the top of the full dumpster. Police said the baby appeared to have been born within the previous 24 hours. Dr. Claus Speth, assistant state medical examiner, concluded that it had been a full-term live birth. Gloucester County Prosecutor Richard E. Hickey said late last night that the infant died of asphyxiation.

This month, Philadelphia won an important battle in the war against trash. City Council, by an overwhelming majority, passed a bill that would change how the city licenses and regulates the thousands of Dumpsters scattered throughout Philadelphia. Dumpsters have become the odiferous scourge of our city's commercial corridors. They line our streets and alleys, taking up valuable public space. They are often overflowing, graffiti covered, and, in many cases, unlicensed or illegally placed.

Near an overturned dumpster, black plastic bags of trash are piling into a small mountain. They are half open, spilling over into a slick of yellow grease and a scattering of coffee cups, potato peelings, cardboard boxes and crumpled copies of Progressive Architecture. Evelyn Alloy, in her navy wool coat, red scarf and black pumps, is briskly walking south on 15th Street, a block from the posh quarters of the Union League and the Bellevue Stratford. She looks down on the tiny thoroughfare known as Moravian Street and spots the disheveled heap.

It will be at least another year before West Caln Township changes to door- to-door trash collection. At its meeting Monday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Charles Blosenski's bid for trash collection from a dumpster at the township's maintenance building on Schrack Creamery Road. The Honey Brook contractor, who has collected the township's trash for the last three years, will charge an average of $312.31 for each dumpster of trash. Under the new contract, residents will continue to bring trash to the site twice a week.

Mike celebrated his sixth birthday a little differently than most kids. Instead of cake and punch, he drank a few beers with his mom. "She had her friends over and all. It was my birthday party. She just put the can beside me and gave it to me . . . It felt good, real good. " After those first beers, Mike, now 19, went from cutting class and drinking quarts with his uncle to chugging whiskey and sleeping it off in a dumpster. By 16, he had graduated to marijuana and then a daily crack cocaine habit.

Police are awaiting a post mortem examination to determine the cause of death of a man whose body was found in a Dumpster in West Philadelphia. The body of the unidentified man was discovered at 12:48 a.m. in the Dumpster behind a supermarket at 48th and Brown Streets in the Mill Creek neighborhood and taken to the Medical Examiner's Office in University City, police said. No other details are available.

An autopsy will be conducted by the medical examiner's office to determine the cause of death of a woman found yesterday inside a dumpster at the Whitehall Apartments housing project in Frankford. The woman, identified last night by relatives as Vivian Buxton, 29, of Briggs Street near Tackawanna, had no visible signs of injury, police said. She lived less than a mile from the project. "I recognize her, but I don't know her name," Tottie Daniels, a resident of the project, said a short time after the body was found.

A New Castle County, Del., woman was charged with attempted first-degree murder after police said she put her newborn son into a dumpster Friday morning. Doris Jackson, 23, of the 300 block of Kemper Drive in the Brookmont Farms section near Newark, was listed in good condition at Christiana Hospital, where she was being held for observation. She was placed under police guard after she was arraigned at the hospital Friday night, and was ordered held on $100,000 bail. Her unnamed son was listed in fair condition yesterday at the hospital's intensive-care unit.

City Councilman Bill Green didn't have to go far yesterday to make his point about unregulated dumpsters in Center City alleys. Green walked two blocks from City Hall to the 1600 block of Ionic Street, a narrow alley between Chestnut and Sansom streets lined with about 30 dumpsters. Not one, Green said, had a valid right-of-way permit needed to place a dumpster on a sidewalk. Some of the dumpsters were overflowing. Almost all of them were marked with graffiti. All could have been cited for fines.

Every Tuesday Leah Howse got a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call. Free of charge, courtesy of the trash haulers right outside her bedroom. Since December, when someone moved a Dumpster to the alley behind her house, the noisy haulers consistently provided an unwanted alarm. Howse, who lives in Francisville, says the combination of the beeping truck, the banging to make sure the Dumpster's empty, and the workers yelling to each other ensures that her day starts early. "It's relatively quick," she says, "but then I'm awake.

SAN FRANCISCO - The greatest park in San Francisco arguably is Golden Gate - 1,017 sweeping acres studded with playgrounds and windmills, lakes and museums, a Shakespeare garden, a brew pub, and its own herd of bison. No one could argue that the latest green spaces to grace the city are a far more modest proposal. The two bright-red Dumpsters, 16 feet long by nearly 6 feet wide and filled with greenery, have been placed in a busy downtown neighborhood where they provide a little shade, elicit regular double-takes, and fill curbside spots that otherwise would go to cars.

The mystery of the floating doughnuts has been solved. Over the last two years, thousands of doughnuts, bagels, and other baked goods have turned up in Newton Lake Park in Collingswood, strewed across the fishing dock and floating in the water. No discernible origin, no suspects - until Thursday. Around 6:15 a.m., park police caught an employee from a nearby Dunkin' Donuts store with three trash bags full of old doughnuts - as well as hair nets and other trash. The man, Santosh Dey of Oaklyn, told police he wanted to feed the geese that make the park their home.

Neil Benson and his merry band of mavericks made art - and headlines - from the stuff other people threw away in the early 1990s. These self-proclaimed "Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia" collected, curated, and transformed treasures they rescued from trash containers and sidewalks into something wonderful. But Benson's commitment to what he calls "free art supplies" became more consuming after he retired from freelance photography a decade ago. As the contents in his network of informal storage spaces seemed to metastasize, his deepening devotion threatened to bury him. Enter another merry band: a new one composed of young artists, old friends, and neighbors.

After an all-day search, police in Bucks County this afternoon found the body of a U.S. Army captain suspected of murdering four people - three in Virginia, one in Buckingham Township - and wounding two police officers during a late-night shootout in Doylestown. Leonard John Egland, 37, of Fort Lee, Va., was found dead in the brush of a vacant lot near York and Almshouse Roads in Warwick Township at around 3:40 p.m., District Attorney David W. Heckler said. Authorities believe he died from a self-inflicted gunshot.

An exhibition titled "Urbanism" might suggest vignettes of city life - the street scenes, storefronts, advertising signs, and crowds of pedestrians that create the daily panorama of a metropolis like Philadelphia. Yet city life as a source of narrative doesn't concern the five artists curator Julien Robson of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts chose for this show. Instead, they are engaged in evoking the energy, both constructive and destructive, and the visual details and subliminal textures of the modern city.

LAST WEEK, I stopped by the New World Shopping Plaza, at 6th and Washington, after a neighbor complained about overflowing Dumpsters that were taking over a corner of the lot. The Marquis checked back Wednesday afternoon and the Dumpsters were nearly full, but were far from overflowing into the parking lot. Progress may be slow, but it's a start. If you want results, send me an email at trash@phillynews.com or find me on Facebook at www.philly.com/MarquisFB . PARKING-LOT BLUES: An Indian restaurant, a Chinese takeout, a pizza place and a salon are among businesses sharing the block on Oakland Street near Cottman Avenue, in the Northeast - and the trash that litters the crumbling parking lot behind the stores is arguably as diverse as the services.

A Philadelphia man last seen removing scrap metal from a Dumpster outside a Montgomery County business was found dead Thursday morning, police said. Lower Moreland police said they are awaiting results from an autopsy but expect that the cause of death was natural causes. There are no signs of foul play. They are withholding identification until they notify next of kin, said Lt. Kevin Dillon. When workers at LaMi Products, on 860 Welsh Road in Huntingdon Valley arrived at work around 6:30 a. m., they found the body next to the dumpster behind the building.

She narrowly escaped what could have turned into a sexual assault only three weeks ago, investigators said. Monday, 9-year-old Skyler Kauffman wasn't so lucky. Hours after discovering the Souderton girl's bludgeoned and beaten body wrapped in a comforter and tossed into a nearby dumpster, police arrested the same 24-year-old neighbor who allegedly locked the girl in his apartment and threatened to expose himself to her last month. Now, he was charged with her murder. If police had only done something the first time, tragedy could have been prevented, said the girl's mother Heather Gebhard.

APROMINENT Philadelphia crime sleuth is speculating that the region's high-profile murder mystery - the shocking discovery of ex-Pentagon official John "Jack" Wheeler III in a Wilmington landfill - might not be a murder at all. William Fleisher, an ex-cop who co-founded Philadelphia's murder-solving Vidocq Society, said that the discovery of eyewitnesses and surveillance video of a disoriented Wheeler before he died suggests that the 66-year-old man...