The Impact of Illegal Dumping
It is no secret that Marianna has litter and illegal dumping problem. About 10 years ago a section of Oak Spring Road was cleaned up, but the dumping has not stopped since then. There are busted televisions, tires, plastic and glass bottles, bags of garbage, couches, and various other household items dumped along many area roadways. It is embarrassing to see such filth, and sad that a few people must think of this area, and our natural world, as a dump. If you find that your someone who is avoiding disposal fees because you can't afford the service, please contact your municipality to see if there is any way they can help. Don't just throw your garbage over a hill and expect them, or someone else, to deal with your garbage after you've thrown it over a steep embankment or left a wild animal to tear through it.
The impact of illegal dumping is huge. It decreases property value, disrupts wildlife, pollutes water and soil, and most certainly is a way to keep tourists away who might want to come here to fish, hike, or eat. Illegal dumping blights a pleasant scene, which in turn creates an ugliness to seasons, especially the ones we anticipate after a long winter.
There are solutions to the problem, and a few are mentioned below with clean-ups and cameras. What must change is awareness through education, however. Lack of education contributes to illegal dumping.
Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has a program that provides surveillance cameras to eligible organizations in Pennsylvania to capture evidence at active, illegal dumpsites. The organizations include municipalities, townships, boroughs, cities, counties, government agencies, as well as Pennsylvania non-profits. Private property owners or individuals are not eligible.
The application is HERE.
West Bethlehem township is having their annual clean up in the next month or so. This is good to try and keep up with the litter. It is a never-ending battle, however, when the roads are re-littered less than a year later.
No one wants to live in a trash can. Each year there is a lasagna effect being baked into the soil, one layer of plastic, another layer of metals and glass, a layer of fallen leaves, then another layer of more plastic as the months go by, then more fallen leaves, glass, plastic, household items, ending with a layer of fallen leaves year after year. To the passerby it looks like nothing but fallen leaves. All the while it is breaking down, however long that may be.
We need to talk about this problem more often if we ever truly want to solve it.
"Clean and nourish your mind wisely everyday. It can easily become a garbage bin." — Philip Arnold
A few environmental resources for parents and teachers:
National Geographic Educational Outlook
