HOUSTON – There are old sofas, what looks like part of a sink, a discarded safe and a bucket filled with an unknown liquid.
"Ugh! It's got a horrible odor. I don't know what that is," said Sheri Cortez.
It's just a taste of what frustrated residents in the Glenshire neighborhood in southwest Houston are dealing with.
The community is not a dumping ground but it's being treated that way. Sheri Cortez is sick and tired of it.
"There's always something, somewhere," Cortez said.
It's been an ongoing battle. The neighborhood has numerous dead end streets and is close to the Beltway so there's easy access in and out. The dumping situation is so bad and so widespread, residents are being asked to get the license plates of suspicious vehicles driving through the subdivision.
"The last thing we want is for some child to find a bag with some hazardous waste or a dead animal or worse." Cortez said.
The homeowner's association has alerted HPD to the chronic dumping spots. In some of the worst illegal dumping locations in Houston, the city has resorted to a network of hidden surveillance cameras to catch the culprits.
"More often than not, there is traceable evidence that will link us to a suspect that we can file charges on," said Roger Haseman, chief of environmental crimes for the Harris County district attorney's office. That's exactly what Cortez is counting on.
"It is illegal and we will prosecute," Cortez said.
Glenshire is in an area of the city that's growing and longtime residents worry about the impact illegal dumping could have on property values if the problem persists.