Residents frustrated as trash piles up along 528 Causeway in Brevard County

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. - People headed along the 528 Causeway into Cape Canaveral are complaining that the road looks a bit trashy.

FOX 35 News went to check the area out for ourselves and can confirm there are piles of trash all along the waterline. 

Some look like they’ve simply accumulated; some seem to have been gathered into one spot on purpose, then left behind. 

That’s something Nathan Kinedlik has noticed too. He works in Orlando but drives to Brevard County every weekend to go fishing.

"It’s kind of depressing, you know? This is my place of peace, and to come out here and see all the garbage," said Kinedlik.

Kinedlik considers himself a bit of an environmentalist. He says he does his best to pick up some of the stuff people leave behind, but he’s up against a lot. 

"There’s not many dumpsters or trash cans, and people just come out here and throw stuff around. It’s sad to see." 

A man named Dean Peaple posted photos of the trash in a community page on Facebook, asking why the government isn’t doing anything about it.  He complained that Fourth of July trash was left behind days later. That seemed to be true, at least to some degree; FOX 35 spotted boxes of fireworks still left behind on Friday. 

The owners of Papa Vitos Italian Restaurant in Cape Canaveral said they’d actually tried to help with this.

"We noticed there are some dumpsters out there, but they aren’t in spots where people are," said Billy Graham, the co-owner of Papa Vitos.

Graham says he and his wife offered to pay the monthly waste management fee to put four extra dumpsters along the causeway. 

Their only stipulation was that he wanted to have a sign on the dumpster advertising his restaurant.

"It’s a no-brainer to us and all the other people we talked to. At the time, we had like 400-something comments on our Facebook page saying what a great concept it was," said Graham. "But the County shot it down, the port shot it down."

Graham says at the time, the County said he’d have to go through Keep Brevard Beautiful. He says that the organization told him there are grants that pay for the cleanup, and wouldn’t work with him to get the extra dumpsters in place, even on his dime.

FOX 35 reached out to Brevard County about the trash. 

Brevard County explained that because the 528 is a state highway, the Florida Department of Transportation is responsible for maintenance and trash cleanup.

The County added, "Bottom line: This has been an issue we’ve dealt with ourselves, but this is now an FDOT situation, not a County a situation." 

FOX 35 asked the FDOT to provide details on the cleaning schedule for this area, along with efforts to eliminate trash buildup and littering. A representative replied saying he’d track down some information. This story will be updated if those details are provided. 

Brevard County also explained the County had Waste Management put an additional dumpster a few years ago, but it became a dumping site.

A lot of the stuff people left behind couldn’t go into a landfill, so the County took it out.