This column presents a conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions.
Local Items:
In my opinion, Jackson County has a terrible system of trash collection and disposal. The existing system encourages locals to illegally dump the trash which routine household collection refuses to pick up. The lack of reasonable alternatives for many citizens results in their trash being left in places which worsen our local area’s appearance, environment, and ecology. The system needs to be improved if our community leaders are really serious about our environment.
Let’s assume you live in a small house somewhere in the extreme southeastern corner of the county, around Hickory Hill on Highway 286, and you replace the roof on one of the sheds behind your house. Now, how do you dispose of the building and roofing materials that are piled up in your yard?
To dispose of these materials legally, as intended by existing systems and laws established by our County Commissioners, you would first have to locate a trailer large enough to carry the items. If you do not own such a trailer, you would either have to borrow one from a friend, or go to a dealer and rent a trailer. (Hopefully your vehicle has a trailer hitch.) Then you take the trailer to the site and load the materials into the trailer.
Next, you pull the trailer some fifty miles to the Spring Hill Landfill near Campbellton and Graceville. You enter the landfill, get weighed on the way in by a very personable and happy clerk, spend a dollar on a stupid green safety vest, and drive up a slick, stinking mud pile to wait your turn to unload. When your turn comes you get out and wade in the gooey, putrid slush and kick out the materials to be shoved away by a waiting bulldozer. Then, after getting the interior of your vehicle good and muddy with your caked boots, you return to the gate where you pay the fifteen or twenty dollar fee to the happy clerk at the landfill, and start the fifty mile trek back home.
Of course, if you happened to have any empty paint cans or a water heater in the load, you were told you could not dump them, and you still have them in the trailer on the way home. As you drive along, you try to figure out a way to make lawn ornaments out of these items when you get back home. If you are unfortunate enough to have more than one trailer load, you can look forward to doing it all again.
In the process you have wasted over a half day, spent over $100, and have ruined a pair of boots in the process. And you end up very angry.
The scenario I describe is for those docile, law abiding, rule following, citizens which would never do anything out of bounds. Now let me describe what many people would do.
Most local citizens know where remote, unattended sites exist which invite an easier method of getting rid of these materials. These numerous locations are within a few minutes drive of their home. These sites are usually unfenced wooded land with small dirt trails winding into the forest, or even better, trails which lead to gaping “sink holes” waiting to welcome the materials. If they can not find any such spots within easy access, the roadside bar ditch offers a last resort solution. After all, why shouldn’t the county road crews take care of the refuse, it is the county which is making the disposal system such a traumatic experience?
So the dumping continues, environmentalist hold seminars about the problem, and the County Officials act as if they have no responsibility in the matter.
Recommended Solution:
The best public system I have seen is the system used by Marion County in the remote areas of the Ocala National Forest. At strategically locations they have a well managed, fenced, and very clean, refuse compacting and sorting collection station. An attendant is on duty to monitor and assist citizens as they bring items to the collection point. In the center of the circular drive is a large industrial compactor which crushes your trash after you place it on the conveyor. Periodically a huge trash truck comes to the site and picks up the compacted trash which has accumulated.
Our county is considering having fuel depots in outlying areas in order to make fueling of road equipment more efficient, so why not combine these fueling stations with these types of trash collection centers? One attendant could operate two sites by spending alternating days on a 2 ½ days per week operating schedule.
Until the county creates a more simple and easy process to get rid of trash, our dumping problems, our sink hole ground water pollution problems, and our county beautification problems, will persist. When I see these ugly, trash filled, sites…..I blame county government.
National Items:
What a mess!!
Rudiments: Odds and Ends Worth Mentioning-
• It should be noted that our Congressman Boyd recently voted against a House Resolution to remove Congressman Charlie Rangel from his position as Chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee while he is under investigation for ethics violations and tax fraud. Boyd voted in support of Rangel, along party lines. Thus, a purported tax chief remains in charge of the committee which oversees our tax codes. Ain’t That Special!
• Work is about to begin on our three sidewalk projects which are being funded by stimulus money. The resulting demand for workers will surely put a real strain on our area labor supply.
• I want to thank all of the businesses and individuals who supported this paper’s “Pennies for Pencils” fund raising effort to buy school supplies for needy children in our schools. Those Principals were very happy to get their checks to take back to their schools for this purpose.
• I want to caution everyone to be sure and lock your homes and vehicles at night. Crime is worsening as fees and utility rates go up, making more and more people in our area desperate.
• I see many comments from elected officials around the state and the nation describing the need to discover more “revenue streams”. Regardless of the stream, the source of the flow eventually ends up being from the pocketbook of the citizens. I see few comments relating to significantly cutting costs, unessential programs and services, salaries, and benefits among the bureaucracy. Additionally, they might have to do like the rest of us and begin driving their vehicles and using computers and other equipment until they actually wear out instead of automatically replacing everything every three or four years. If they begin to do these things, they will be “Getting It Right”.
Note: The opinions stated in this column are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Hatcher Publications.
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