USPS Mail Bins Crowd Sidewalks In Financial District

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Amid the hustle and bustle on Financial District streets, a different type of neighbor is taking up space.

Some walk right by the empty, white mail bins without a second thought.

"Half the things in this city I don't notice," one passerby said.

Others, like Financial District resident Lynn Heatherton, call them a huge neighborhood eyesore.

"This is my huge pet peeve," Heatherton told CBS 2's Andrea Grymes.

Piles of the U.S. Postal Service bins sit stacked up on corners and outside the post office on John Street.

"It's disgusting," Financial District worker Jason Figueroa said.

Residents like Heatherton say the stacks, sometimes rising six feet high, often stick around for weeks at a time. Heatherton says it's been a health and safety hazard for the last few years and her complaints to the postal service have gone nowhere.

"It's just horrible to look at them and smell them. People put a lot of trash in them," she said.

Not long after Grymes got to the bins, some postal workers started removing the boxes that were stacked up near the post office. Earlier, a local doorman told CBS 2 he would come out every day to take away the garbage piled inside the boxes to keep the mice away.

A Postal Service spokesperson says they use the bins or tubs to deliver and pick up mail at many large companies.

She says, "We appreciate that our customers return the tubs to us because they are a cost to us. The tubs are also retrieved on a regular basis by USPS transportation personnel."

The spokesperson says later Wednesday night, workers will pick the bins up.

The postal service also encourages large companies to drop off their bins and other containers as often as possible at the Morgan Processing Center on the west side.

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