43
Get tough against illegal dumpers, officials urge.
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County and Youngstown city recycling and litter-control officials said they want to become more proactive in addressing the illegal-dumping problem here by using Cleveland’s approach of targeting the problem at its source.
“It’s reactive. We get a complaint. We follow up with the complaint. We try to find out who did it,” in the current Mahoning County enforcement effort, said Jennifer Jones, Youngstown litter control and recycling director.
In contrast, the Cleveland program “is much more proactive,” with that city’s Environmental Crimes Task Force members visiting companies that generate the waste, she said.
“Most of the illegal dumping of tires and debris is company-based. It’s commercial-based,” she explained.
In Cleveland, anti-dumping enforcers visit tire shops, requiring their operators to show proof that they have contracts with licensed tire transporters and to show receipts indicating actual use of those transporters, Lou Vega, Mahoning County recycling director, recently told the county’s solid-waste policy committee.
The Cleveland program also targets people who are paid to clean out abandoned homes before they are demolished and then illegally dump their contents, he added.
The Cleveland program prosecutes illegal dumpers on felony charges, seizes their trucks and seeks forfeiture of those vehicles on the grounds that they are tools used to commit these environmental crimes, he said.
Cleveland dedicates two detectives, a police sergeant and a prosecutor to its task force and uses its law department to revise and strengthen environmental ordinances, Vega said.
In Mahoning County, where there were 945 littering and illegal-dumping complaints last year, only one law enforcer – a deputy sheriff – is dedicated to the task.
James Stratton, a former Mahoning County recycling director, who now serves on the policy committee, emphasized the need to coordinate law enforcement with prosecutors and judges.
“It’s not just convictions. It’s convictions with the right set of circumstances” that get the mess cleaned up, he said. “You don’t want to send somebody to jail and leave the place a mess.”
The defendant should be told: “‘Hey, you can clean it up and not go to jail,’” Stratton told the committee.
Enforcement goals are not accomplished if, after a long investigation, a defendant is simply fined $100 and local government is forced to perform the cleanup, Jones added.
“It’s a countywide problem, and we have to address it jointly, using as many resources as possible,” Vega said, referring to the sheriff’s department, boards of health and city and township police and zoning officials.
Vega described the Cleveland program to the policy committee after he and sheriff’s office and city officials went to Cleveland to learn about that city’s efforts.
Vega said officials from the Cleveland task force and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency offered to visit Youngstown to discuss their approach, and the results they’ve achieved, with officials here.
“I like what they’re doing, and I’d like to replicate some of that here,” Vega said.