Trash found dumped at national historic landmark – again

June 5, 2019 5:25 pm

By Brittany Comak

Twitter: @BComakABC6

COVENTRY, R.I. (WLNE) – Volunteers with the General Nathanael Greene Homestead are wondering who would leave trash on their property.

They found blankets, a lawn chairs, even a helium tank at the national historic landmark Wednesday morning.

“Really, again? Someone dropped trash here, again?” was Homestead President David Procaccini’s reaction.

It’s the second time in the last two months that someone dumped rubbish at the museum dedicated to the Revolutionary War veteran.

In April they found that someone had dumped bags of leaves and construction waste down in their backyard.

“It’s really kind of disgraceful to do that, and disrespectful, especially in Coventry where you can dump that stuff at the DPW for free,” said Procaccini.

But this time around, the museum says they’re not sure this was a typical garbage dump.

“It may have been a veteran, may have been a homeless veteran, looking at some of the stuff in it,” said Procaccini.

Some of the items left were an American flag, a cup of cigarette butts, coffee, and items from Operation Stand Down.

Coventry Public Works plans to pick up the items Thursday. They say this may have been an instance of someone cleaning out their attic.

“It doesn’t actually look typically what we would see,” said Melissa Soares of Coventry Public Works. “Little bit different that they would drop it off in such a populated area where the houses are so close together. We certainly hope that this isn’t a misfortune case of some kind.”

In the meantime, the museum is trying to raise money to install surveillance cameras.

“In the grand scheme of things it can be easily picked up but still if it keeps happening, it’s really not good for the site to have that happen,” said Procaccini.