Viewpoints
More Littering
by Jerry Cegelske
July 01, 2004
Thursday
Residents of North Tongass
and those traveling there were given a special treat Wednesday
morning, some nice fresh litter scattered in and along the road
from two different sources. One interesting thing is that the
litter by the Narrows belongs to someone I previously gave a
citation to, so this will be their second! If they knew the
information that they have made available to the public by littering
the roads they would be much more cautious about what they did
with it.
The last picture shows litter from a three ring binder that
had information on students' grades from a grade school. How
would you like it if your children's grades and comments about
their progress in school was littered along the road for anyone
to see? As it turned out, it was accidentally left on the trunk
of a car late Tuesday night when the driver, not knowing it was
left there drove off. I collected it in a bag and will return
it to the owner as they want to retain the information.
The pictures show two types of littering, one by those that don't
care where their trash goes, and the second by someone who made
an error in judgement which led to their loss of valuable information.
One is a mistake, the second is inexcusable, but both end up
as litter on our roads.
The pictures of the raven and the truck show what happens when
people leave garbage bags in the back of their truck for a short
period of time. I was facetiously told by someone that a raven
can see trash bags from three miles away. I'm not so sure they
can't. Years ago I watched ravens pulling garbage out of bags
in the back of a truck by the old 108 bar. It was when they
pulled out the third slice of bread that I realized that it wasn't
garbage they were digging into, it was groceries. The same thing
was observed in Fairbanks when the ravens opened a box of meat
on top of a box truck, took out a three pound package of pork
chops, tossed it to the ground where their feathered friends
were in the process of dining on it while the instigators continued
to dine from the box. What usually happens with garbage in this
situation is that the vehicle driver fails to pick up the trash
and drives off, leaving the city, borough or state to clean up
their mess.
A week ago I was told about
a load that was properly covered by the Recreation Center. I
took a picture of it to show people what they need to do to help
keep Ketchikan clean. This was one of the few properly covered
loads observed in Ketchikan. How many have you seen? Usually
it is boxes and trash bags tossed in the back of a truck with
no concern about where it ends up. The Solid Waste Facility
or landfill gave out tarps to truck drivers to help them cover
their loads but very few have used them since they were given
them. What is it going to take to make people aware of their
responsibilities?
Jerry Cegelske
Code enforcement - Ketchikan Gateway Borough
E-mail: jerry.cegelske@borough.ketchikan.ak.us
228-6621
Ketchikan, AK - USA
Raven checking out
the trash & seeing what is available.
Paint can the raven tossed out of the truck...
A Raven's handiwork-
there was no food garbage in the bag
A properly covered
load
Fresh litter on North
Tongass by the Narrows
Litter from a three
ring binder that had
confidential information on students' grades from a grade school...
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