The city has sought to ramp up efforts to address the problem, but cleanup crews have encountered a Sisyphean task. Meanwhile, years of lax enforcement, largely the product of budget constraints, have emboldened outlaws from inside and outside the city, officials said.

Crucially, the city has among the highest waste-collection fees in Alameda County.

James/The ChronicleД«ut the roots of OaklandвЂ™s illegal dumping crisis precede the pandemic. Marcus Leggett (left), a street maintenance leader, and Ayinde Osayaba, a street maintenance worker, pick up trash in Oakland. Some Oakland officials taking stock of the problem speculate that, confined to their homes, residents generated more trash than they could get rid of legally - another side effect of the reordering of life that prompted shortages of consumer goods like toilet paper and baking flour. Neighborhoods with high numbers of residents of color have been affected the most. In the hardest-hit areas, small mountains of illegally dumped household garbage, commercial waste and construction debris are choking city streets and sidewalks, overwhelming the cleanup crews and distressing residents. вЂњThe illegal dumping, the graffiti, the trash - itвЂ™s out of control.вЂќ вЂњI have never seen Oakland to the level of blight that it is today,вЂќ Councilmember Noel Gallo, who has made the fight against dumping one of his signature issues, said in an interview. City crews picked up 70,000 cubic yards of unlawfully dumped trash in that time, government data shows, an avalanche of filth that marked a new high - or low - in the struggle. Oakland, a city long plagued by illegal dumping, has been especially trashed over the past year, thanks to a heap of factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic.Д«etween July 2020 and June 2021, enough garbage landed on the cityвЂ™s streets, alleys, lots and sidewalks to cover the length of 13 football fields with trash up to a personвЂ™s waist, according to a Chronicle analysis.

Trash grabber