Independence Township board members seek crackdown on trash dumpers

Independence Township Board members Joe Brumley, left, and Tommy McMahon, take stock of an illegal dump site at Ely Road and 19 Ditch Thursday.

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It's an old adage, and one most people subscribe to regarding trash.

However, for rural Independence Township residents and a couple of its board members, illegal dumping is neither out of sight, nor out of mind.

In fact, board members Tommy McMahon and Joe Brumley have their sights set on those people who contribute to the ever-increasing problem of illegal dumpsites.

"Just look at this," McMahon said Thursday as he raked a gloved hand through a trash bag discarded at Ely Road and 19 Ditch. "It's like this at every bridge that crosses 19 Ditch, and many other locations out here in the country."

Brumley agreed.

"We're going to have to burn all this," Brumley said. "Sheriff Holder said he'd be here Friday with four inmates and a front-end loader to help clean up this mess."

Thursday's refuse at the site included untold pounds of soiled, disposable diapers; dead television sets; discarded washers and dryers; fake Christmas tree limbs; and worse -- an entire box of unused insulin syringes.

"The really bad part about all this is that this is city garbage," McMahon said as he searched for the odd bill that might offer him the name and address of the bag's rightful owner. "This doesn't come from rural areas.

"It's the city's mess and we have to look at it out here in the country."

While the Kennett City Council sifts through the intricacies of a proposed Solid Waste plan aimed at easing city residents' trash burdens, both McMahon and Brumley sift through piles of garbage at the Ely Road bridge.

Both men have tracked down offenders, they said. Both board members are life-long county residents who lay claim to a passion for outdoor life.

However, each man said illegal dumping is an unsightly problem that rural residents have encountered for years -- only now the issue affects city residents, too, Brumley said.

"Kids like to come out here and fish the ditch, ride four-wheelers, things like that," he said. "What if some kids found this box of needles?

"If something isn't done about this situation, there will come a time when we have to close off the area for recreational use," Brumley added. "Not to keep people from fishing or having fun, but to keep people from dumping trash."

McMahon agreed.

"We have a lot of problems with people throwing blocks of concrete in the ditches and stopping them up completely," he said. "If they'd just tell us, we'd have taken it and used it ourselves."

The board members said the township's number-one priority is to maintain its 180 miles of gravel roads. McMahon emphasized that his road crew "gets out and picks up trash" during rainy weather.

"It gets to where we have to decide to either work on the roads, keep them graded, or pick up trash," McMahon said. "Remember, Independence Township includes all of Kennett, Peach Orchard almost to Caruth, and from the county line to the St. Francis River.

"That's quite a large area," he continued. "But just look. There's trash all over, and the problem is getting worse."

A Daily Dunklin Democrat reporter faxed Kennett Mayor Donal Parker a list of questions Thursday regarding the city council's Solid Waste proposal.

The mayor said he was not prepared to discuss the questions because the council's plan still is on the drawing board.

However, Parker did say that he expected to see some kind of official ordinance that addresses the city's trash dilemma at the next council meeting.

The Kennett City Council meets again at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Kennett Municipal Building, 200 Cedar St., Kennett.