By Casey Miner  The UC Berkeley tree-sitters may have gained national notoriety for throwing feces at arborists and police, but university groundskeepers say that’s nothing new – they clean human waste from the university grounds every day.

“I would say it’s almost 20 percent of our work,” says supervisor Gary Imazumi.

A number of homeless people often sleep on campus, and when buildings are locked they urinate and defecate in alleyways and bushes, says Imazumi. He says that while he can’t be sure that only homeless people are responsible, the biggest problem areas are places near where people sleep.

“It’s where the homeless are living, or very nearby,” he says.

Zellerbach Hall and University Hall, he says, are two of the biggest problem areas. A close second is People’s Park, which the university owns and manages.

“Occasionally, the People’s Park restroom is basically smeared with fecal material, all through the walls. It’s pretty disgusting,” he says.

Imazumi says that while he isn’t sure of the university’s official policy towards homeless people on campus, he doesn’t think that the police often ask them to leave.

No one from the university police department was available to comment for this story.

Imazumi has supervised the “washdown” crew for close to five years. He says that while the department’s policy is to respond to all complaints as quickly as possible, the groundskeepers also make it a point to wash down certain parts of campus several times each week.

He says that most incidents – human waste on the floors, for example merely require a basic washdown: gardeners spray the area with high-powered hoses to clear away the mess.

Sometimes, though, the location of the waste is more difficult to access. Stairwells and alleyways, he says, are particularly time consuming, and can require up to an hour and a half of work.

Robert Long, the coordinator of Berkeley’s Multi-Agency Service Center, a homeless drop-in center west of campus, says restroom access can be a major problem for the city’s homeless, especially at night.

“In my experience, if people have a bathroom, they don’t have to use the [side of the] building,” he says.

A city initiative passed last year opened several new public restrooms during the day and extended the hours of others. But at night, the only public options are a handful of portable toilets.

Roger Williams, 53, says he often sleeps behind a church near Telegraph Avenue. The public restrooms, he says, are not clean, and at night the portable toilets can be dangerous.

“My wife doesn’t even want to go in,” he says.

Dale Rich, 54, says that he is homeless and knows where all the public bathrooms are around the city. But he thinks he’s in the minority.

“People don’t know where to go. They have a lot of trouble locating bathrooms,” he says.

Imazumi says he thinks the waste problem on campus has gotten worse over the past several years. He can’t say exactly why, but he knows he doesn’t have enough staff, to stay ahead of it.

For that reason, he says, he’s glad the tree-sit is over.

“We had so many calls coming in regarding human waste that it was ridiculous,” he says. “And that was just the supporters on the sidewalk. They were just urinating, going wherever they wanted.”

Last 5 posts by Casey Miner

• Life and the Landfill - April 7th, 2009
• Oscar Grant protest at Fruitvale BART - March 6th, 2009
• Why Did the Commuter Cross the Road? - February 5th, 2009
• Audio: UC Berkeley's Green Bike Share - December 5th, 2008
• Envisioning a New Lower Sproul - November 24th, 2008