Illegal dumping can sully area’s image, create work for town
Glenmont resident George Bercharlie doesn’t like it, he says his neighbors don’t like it and officials in the Town of Bethlehem aren’t crazy about it either. Then again, who really likes garbage?
Illegal dumping, while described by town officials as an isolated problem, nevertheless impacts the town and its residents by visually affecting neighborhoods and creating extra work for highway crews. For Bercharlie, at issue is a wide shoulder area off of Route 144 near his home on Old River Road that has several times over become the home of tires, trash and recently, a deep line of apparent building materials like broken cement and brick.
Just down the road on National Grid land is another dumping site where Bercharlie and his neighbors like to take hikes and walk their dogs. There are dozens of tires, broken glass and shingles strewn about.
This is our back yard somebody’s turning into a landfill, Bercharlie said. `I’m just sick of looking at it.`
The shoulder is a place where truckers and motorists often pull off to eat or talk on the phone, he continued, and as such the effects of littering are a constant, but with the larger items locals can’t simply clean it up. The refuse even stopped his son’s school bus from using the shoulder as a turnaround, forcing a longer detour.
So Bercharlie contacted the town, and Highway Superintendent Gregg Sagendorph said that on Saturday, Nov. 14, highway workers cleaned the shoulder up and hauled off seven large dump trucks full of material. But removing the debris probably won’t solve the problem, he said.
`When we clean it up we just make space for them to dump more,` Sagendorph said.
Illegal dumping is a problem, he said, especially in the more rural areas of town. This particular location has been cleaned up before, he continued.
`We usually find it more on the dead end country roads, where it’s kind of secluded. It’s unusual to find it like this on a state highway,` Sagendorph said.
As for private lands, it’s ultimately the landowner’s responsibility to clean up refuse, but the town will work with landowners if practicable.
`There’s no sense cleaning it up until there’s a gate with a lock in place,` said Sagendorph of the dumping in Glenmont. `Once the gate’s up we can work with National Grid to get it cleaned up.`
Doing cleanup work can take workers away from other tasks and uses up town resources, though, and the cost of illegal dumping is ultimately assumed by the taxpayer. The nature of the crime means catching perpetrators can be difficult, as well.
`It depends on what the property is,` said Lieutenant Thomas Heffernan of the Bethlehem Police Department. `If it’s bags of garbage, there’s a good chance that they left an envelope or part of a bill or something If it’s just miscellaneous stuff with no names on it, that can be difficult.`
Heffernan said that the police department doesn’t receive a lot of reports of illegal dumping, but if they do the investigation will center around finding some sort of identification for the person doing the dumping, whether it’s a piece of trash or vehicle identification. Police may also step up patrols in hopes of deterring the activity or catching a perpetrator.
Town code prohibits illegal dumping. If it’s done on private land, trespassing charges could also come into play.
`Generally, we do get maybe a couple complaints throughout the year, its not something we deal with that often,` Heffernan said.
Sagendorph said the cost of recycling and disposing of garbage, including construction materials, drives illegal dumping. In Bethlehem, higher tipping fees went into effect on Monday, Nov. 16, for the disposal of construction materials. The town has to close its Rupert Road landfill by the end of the month and will transport refuse to another site, and the fees are reflecting that cost by increasing to $120 per ton from $60.
`People are finding these places as alternatives,` Sagendorph said.
Bercharlie said that he would be on the lookout for any more instances of illegal dumping, and hopes others will do the same.
`It’s not fair anyone gets stuck paying for it but the person who threw it there,` he said.“