🗑 SWANK Dispatch: I Live in a House, Not a Hurricane Casualty — Pick Up My Trash
🗓️ 16 July 2020
Filed Under: waste management failure, asthma accommodation, basic services denied, infrastructure neglect, environmental injustice, public health risk, municipal inaction, disability rights
“We live in the brown houses.
We are not ruins. We are residents.
Please pick up the trash.”
— A Mother with Eosinophilic Asthma and Zero Municipal Support
This polite but pointed letter from Polly Chromatic to Mr. Kendrick Neely, head of Environmental Health in Providenciales, is more than a waste collection request — it is an exposure of municipal failure to serve high-risk residents in the aftermath of hurricane damage.
🧾 I. The Situation, Summarised
Polly lives on Palm Grove, Grand Turk
Trash trucks pass nearby, but never drive down her road
She has no car — she bikes with four children
The other houses were destroyed in a hurricane, but hers is inhabited
She has severe eosinophilic asthma, making physical strain and waste exposure dangerous
She recycles most waste — but needs basic pickup services for remaining trash
Wild donkeys are tearing into the uncollected trash, creating public health and environmental hazards
🚨 II. She Asks for One Simple Thing:
“Please tell me what day and time I should expect them so I can put my trash out.”
Because she’s not trying to complain.
She’s trying to participate.
But the state has already decided her street doesn’t count — and her lungs are left to pay the price.