Scenic Drive Tagged and Trashed

Click on image to enlarge. Then weep.

Photo by Vallarie Enriquez, Vantage Point Visual Studios, Inc.

Last Sunday morning people attending the Celebration of Our Mountains' "A Walk through Time" on Scenic Drive as well as the regular Scenic Sunday crowd were shocked to find the amount and size of tagging on the strata above Scenic Point and Murchison Park. Along with the tagging were piles of garbage (not just trash) above and below Murchison Park. (Pictures)

Along with pictures, I emailed officials on Monday:

When El Pasoans, their guests, visitors and tourists go to Scenic Drive (a spot that we have pointed to with pride so often in the past), they will now find the once beautiful rock stratas above Murchison Park/Scenic Point heavily tagged. Some of the tagging is obscene. If they take a short hike up and to the other side of the strata ridge, they will find more. What greets people now is what you see in these pictures. (I have higher res photos as well.) If anyone peeks over the side of the walls above and surrounding Murchison Park, they will see piles of not just trash but garbage.

This issue is not just a District One or District Two issue. It is an issue for all El Pasoans. The length of Scenic is strewn with beer cans and condoms. I took the above pictures today after General Services had cleaned the areas near the trash cans. I can tell you though that, yesterday when we had our Celebration event, the evidence of the weekend partying was all about.

I suggest that, if the EPPD is so stretched out that they cannot stop the drunkenness that results in chunks of the Scenic Drive walls from being gouged out on a regular almost weekly basis now by intoxicated drivers and they cannot stop the littering and tagging and make a real effort to do so, perhaps they can be assisted by the County Sheriff. If both cannot put a stop to it, perhaps the Commander of Ft. Bliss should be asked for his help by deputizing some of his troops. If we really crackdown over a month or two of weekends, much of this will finally be stopped. As it is now, the tagging, the garbage, the consumption of alcohol and the misbehavior is done with impunity and with the result of a Scenic Drive becoming a place of shame for all El Pasoans and not a place of beauty.

If it isn’t stopped, then we should all be ashamed to take anyone visiting our homes and our City on a tour of Scenic Drive.

I hope to get a response. Believe me – I will pursue this until the problem is permanently corrected.

Jim H. Tolbert

Representative Byrd responded as did Representative Ann Lilly's office which followed-up by working with General Services and other departments in the City. General Services is in the process of developing a volunteer page for groups to help clean-up Scenic. One wonders what has happened with Walgreen's which has seemingly disappeared from Scenic although they have a sign posted about their efforts to keep it clean. As much of the tagging was done on privately owned land (if you can believe that our mountains have private owners - much of the southern area is so owned), Environmental Services became involved as the issue became a matter of code compliance.

Clean-up began almost immediately. Sadly, clean-up cannot be the final solution.

Unfortunately the one person who has failed to respond to my email and is also missing in action is the Chief of the El Paso Police Department, Gregory Allen. I'm glad that volunteers will help clean-up the Drive and I'm grateful to all El Paso taxpayers for funding anti-graffiti efforts. However, shouldn't those who tag and trash bear the responsibility and shouldn't they be held accountable? The only department in the City who can significantly change the behavior of those whose mayhem mars our mountains is the Police Department. They should be out in force weekend after weekend, handing out tickets, stopping the public drinking that is increasingly leading to punctured walls along the Drive, making arrests, bringing to justice those who need to change their behavior and who need to be required by courts to clean-up their filth. No response yet from Chief Allen. Zilch. Zero. Nada.