Cleanup Crews Attack Illegal Dump Sites

SEBRING - "Cool beans" is an old '70s phrase that Sherri Cooper uses to express "good news."

The "cool beans" now for the coordinator of Keep Highlands County Beautiful is that the county is back to normal in the business of cleaning up illegal dump sites.

Through the manpower shortage at Highlands County Recycling of the past three months, the waiting list for dump-site cleanups grew to about 95. That was about five times the normal list of 15 to 20 dump sites.

"Now that we're 'back on the board' again, I expect to see our numbers (on cleanups) move back up again," Cooper said Friday.

Cecil Perry recently transferred to the recycling program from county road and Bridge and is concentrating on clearing the dozens of roadside areas trashed with everything from busted furniture to broken glass and building materials, piles of old tires to potentially dangerous propane tanks.

Until Perry transferred in to get the dump-site cleans back on track, Cooper said, "we were not only short handed, but we were also under a hiring freeze."

"Our goal now," she added, "is to clean up that backlog of sites (countywide) and to concentrate on Sun 'n Lakes South, which is the worst area for illegal dumps in the county, in my opinion," Cooper said.

Perry, on the new job for a few weeks, agrees with that assessment.

"There are some other areas that are bad, but this is the worst," he said as he and temporary worker Jake Buttron cleaned out roadside tangles of all types of trash along the backwoods roads in the undeveloped portion of Sun n' Lakes South.

"There's a TV there, roofing materials there, and here's a gas can," Perry said, hoisting up a 10-gallon gasoline can. "Still has some gasoline in it," he added as he felt the weight, "or, at least I think it's gas that's in there."

So far, Perry, who splits his time between cleanups and work at the recycling center, has cleaned out 11 dump sites, picking up, with the help of temporary workers, a total of 1,640 pounds of discarded junk fouling the roads.

Like most county residents and employees, Perry had heard and read about the illegal dumping problem but never saw it close up before.

"I didn't know it was this bad until I started working with recycling," he said. "It's amazing the stuff people throw out. And most of it they can have picked up by their garbage hauler just by putting it out at their own street."

Perry remembers his first big Sun 'n Lake South cleanup. He fills out a report for each clean up and lists the types of items dumped there.

After describing all types of junk, he stopped listing them and just wrote: "You name it."

He explained, "I got tired of writing down so many types of things they threw out - old vehicle parts, Jacuzzi tubs, scrap siding, a fiberglass shower stall. It looked like something a hurricane blew down and they hauled it all out here. I just stopped and wrote, 'You name it, it's out here.'"

Sheriff's deputies supervise community maintenance workers who have been cleaning up dump sites too, Cooper said, and now that the county's cleanup program is back to normal strength, the trash piles will disappear quicker.

Unfortunately, she said, reports of new dump sites usually come in every week.

Perry said many of the dump sites in Sun 'n Lakes South are on the vacant back roads where no one lives. The saddest sites, he said, are piles of trash discarded near homes.

"Some of it is dumped right in front of people's homes, sometimes just 100 feet away from a house," he said. "I don't know how somebody can do something like this."

The chances of catching and prosecuting illegal dumpers will grow tremendously in a few months when the county gets a high-tech, weather-proof surveillance camera, triggered by motion or light and aimed at catching dumpers in the act.

"It's a felony," Cooper said. "And the more weight of the illegal dumping, the more serious the charge."