Muskogee County Leaders Combat Trash Dumping Problem

Muskogee County leaders say they're fed up with people dumping garbage on the side of the road.

And they're not going to take it anymore.

Mattresses, tree stumps, steel drums and lumber—you name it and chances are it's here.

"When it's somebody else's trash and they don't want to deal with it responsibly, they take it out and dump it in the county," said Muskogee County Commissioner Gene Wallace.

The Board of Commissioners, the Sheriff's department and the District Attorney's office are tired of dealing with this problem.

"We're sick of irresponsibility," Wallace said. "They just don't want to pay the cost, so they dump it on county roads and then it becomes a tax payer cost."

To combat this issue, one Sheriff's deputy will soon be designated the "environmental officer."

"This person is going to patrol. He is going to get information from eye witnesses or maybe to a hotline that's called in to the Sheriff's office," Wallace said. "There isn't anything good that happens as a product of them dumping it on the roads."

Joey McNamara knows this first hand. He's a volunteer firefighter in the county and says trash is the perfect thing to fuel a grassfire.

"It would make it a lot nicer whenever you go out to brush fires and stuff if you didn't have to deal with trash on the side of the roads and everything," McNamara said.

And as a country man, McNamara says this new plan will make living conditions much nicer.

"It will help keep the neighborhood cleaner and help keep the countryside cleaner. It gets kind of dirty out there when people start dumping their trash and their old couches and stuff like that off," McNamara said.

The county says they won't just be targeting people who are dumping; they'll also go after people who litter.

County Commissioner Gene Wallace said they have already started the hiring process for this position.

He said the Sheriff's office and the county commissioners will fund this project.

And inmates will also help pick up trash.