Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Garbage – and the problems associated with its illegal dumping and costly disposal – is more and more on city and county officials’ minds of late.
The Jefferson County Commission recently approved a number of measures that are intended to combat the mixing of non-household trash with household garbage – called contamination in the industry – and hopefully reduce the county’s disposal costs in the process.
And now Monticello officials are trying to find their own way of dealing with the problem of garbage contamination and illegal dumping in the city.
At a recent workshop on Tuesday, Jan. 19, members of the City Monticello Council brainstormed how they might address the problem, which they say is growing and variously describe as a scourge in some areas if the city.
Mayor Julie Conley specifically identified the problem as the mixing of different types of garbage, which she called “dirty garbage.”
“I don’t think that anyone of us has the answer,” Conley said. “But it’s on us to fix the problem somehow. It’s an educational thing. The problem is never going to go away unless we make it an issue, and even then it won’t go away completely. I don’t know how we can change the culture or mindset.”
She was referring to the intermixing of roadside trash, so that city workers must sort and separate the trash if it is to go into the proper waste streams.
“The city will pick up yard trash or household garbage, but you can’t mix the two,” Conley said.
She noted that a resident will place yard trash on the roadside for city pickup. But then along will come other residents and dump food waste, furniture, lumber and other types of trash atop the pile.
“We need to get residents educated not to mix the trash,” Councilman John Jones offered. “We have to get the community to help. People need to get onto litterers and report them.”
He suggested that the imposition of a penalty might be needed to get the message across that littering and illegal dumping would not be tolerated.
“We got some people who just don’t care,” Jones said. “They’ve got no pride in the community.”
He suggested that one solution might be to charge a fee on the water bill. Another, he said, might be to do more frequent trash pickups.
Councilman George Evans agreed with the fee idea. He suggested it might work to run the trash pickups like the city ran the household garbage pickup. Meaning that the city would charge a fee for the service.
“Only way some people are going to learn better is to start charging,” Evans said. “Otherwise, we’re going to have a trashy town.”
“It won’t be a quick fix,” he added. “But we need to do something to make people accountable.”
He noted that vacant and overgrown lots were also a problem and contributed to the general unsightliness of certain areas of the city.
Other possible solutions discussed involved getting prison inmate crews to pick up the trash (provided that the prison allows work crews out again post COVID-19) and running a campaign to educate the public on the need to not mix trash.
Councilwoman Gloria Cox also mentioned the Monticello Community in Action, a citizens group that she said she was in the process of forming to help instill community pride and address some of the problems at the roots level.
“We’re trying to get people involved and educated on the do’s and don’ts,” Cox said, adding that the group was still in the development stage.
The council members agreed to continue to discuss the problem going forward. In the meantime, they instructed City Manager Raymond Clark to step up trash pickups in the worst hit areas and maybe pass out educational materials.
The council, meanwhile, indicated that it would continue to monitor the situation and hopefully come up with a more long-term solution.