On illegal dumping, solution hard to find

There is tossing a fast-food cup and sack out of the window of a moving car, and then there’s pulling over and shoving mattresses and old furniture out of the bed of a pickup. Both are illegal and end up as ugly messes, but if one is a hand grenade, the other is a bomb.

And now the more egregious problem is getting a closer look by city officials.

During a Public Health and Welfare Committee meeting last week, officials said illegal dumping is getting out of control.

And the answer might be to place dumpsters around town to give these sorely irresponsible folks a legal place to toss stuff.

The plan, well, one of them, would be to place two dumpsters in each of the city’s four wards.

“We have two council members per ward, and we would rotate those dumpsters in those wards,” said Alderman Lloyd Holcomb Jr., who is one of the committee members.

But of course this red carpet treatment for these illegal dumpers would be more expensive, as the mayor’s assistant, Louise Sullivan, noted.

“Keep in mind the additional cost because we did not come up with an agreement with Waste Management to put two dumpsters per ward,” she told the gathering. “We got an agreement with them that we would have four citywide cleanups and we would have dumpsters placed at the appropriate location for those cleanups.” And even this proposal might not be enough.

There is a fear that even with the additional legal dumping opportunities, scofflaws would throw in hazardous waste items, such as paint and petroleum products, that would taint the contents of the entire container.

“If there is anything in that dumpster that is considered contamination by Waste Management, they will not empty that dumpster,” Sullivan said.

Then the idea was floated to put the dumpsters behind a locked gate of some sort.

Sullivan countered that by saying she thought the dumpers would just leave the items outside the locked gate, thereby illegally dumping at the site that was established to combat illegal dumping. Whew, this is making our head hurt.

Alderman Joni Alexander, another committee member, said she thought it would be better to put the dumpsters at one location so that everyone in the city knows where they are — and so all of the council members, when asked, would know exactly where to tell the public they could go to pitch their items.

There was even the idea of putting a main drop-off location at Hestand Stadium that would be open on the first Friday and Saturday of each month.

We can’t imagine the folks who operate the stadium would want that on their property, and really, don’t we have enough vacant lots for something like this without intruding on the stadium grounds?

As one can see, it’s not easy to figure out how to stay ahead of illegal dumpers.

Each “solution” comes with its own drawbacks.

But we certainly give the committee praise for working on the issue.

And as they all said, they will continue to work on this and settle on a plan in the near future.

Another element of this problem is that at some point, the public has to be encouraged to do what is responsible.

That comes with education, a never-ending public service campaign, as well as a genuine interest in finding out who is doing the dumping and holding them accountable.

Perhaps we will get there, but it is depressing to see thoroughfares that were cleaned up one day during a citywide cleanup effort and completely littered a short time later.

That, of course, reflects poorly on us all, and the quicker we can get a handle on the problem, the better.

We would much prefer people driving through Pine Bluff remark on what a cute Main Street rather than, “Did you see all that litter?”