Trash, Accusations Pile Up After New York City Snowstorm

Tourists visiting New York City have been treated to a different sort of snow-blanketed vision: trash mountains.

The city's Sanitation Department resumed residential garbage pickup this morning for the first time since Christmas Eve, though still only at 50 percent capacity, The New York Times reported. The cornucopia of trash was a side effect of the post-Christmas blizzard that coated much of the East Coast in more than a foot of snow and which, mysteriously, New York City had inordinate trouble clearing from its streets.

Trash Piling Up and So Are Accusations After NYC Snow Job

Dana Chivvis for AOL News

New York City resumed residential trash pickup for the first time since Christmas Eve on Monday morning. The mysterious break in service has led to mountains of trash piling up along the city's streets.

The botched snow removal has led to rumors that Sanitation Department workers deliberately stymied the work to protest departmental budget cuts, according to CNN. The New York Post reported Sunday that an unusually high number of sanitation workers -- 11 to 12 percent of them -- called in sick during the blizzard. New York City Councilman Dan Halloran, who told CNN he had heard from five witnesses with claims of departmental sabotage, said normally only 2 to 4 percent of workers call in sick.

Other witnesses told the Post that four Sanitation Department supervisors spent Monday night drinking beer in a department car instead of plowing the streets. Nearby, six people spent the night in a city bus that was stranded in the snow. In the morning, the unnamed witnesses said, the workers called their bosses and told them they had run out of gas.

The city's Department of Investigation has launched a probe into the alleged snow job.

"We urge all members of the public, most especially city employees, to call us with any information about this matter or with any provable information about deliberate inaction or wrongdoing relating to the snowstorm," Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn said in a statement.

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The head of the sanitation department workers' union told CNN he was not aware of any malfeasance.

The city received the sixth largest number of 911 calls during the storm, New York magazine reported. For some, help didn't arrive in time. A Brooklyn woman in labor waited nine and a half hours for an ambulance. But by the time it arrived, the baby could not be saved. Another woman with stroke symptoms spent six hours waiting for an ambulance and had severe brain damage by the time she reached the hospital, the Times reported.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg took responsibility for the scant progress last week. Today he said he hoped the mounds of trash would be gone in three to four days. Recycling pickup, however, has been suspended indefinitely.