County faces illegal dumping

For landowners illegal dumping can be a common problem

GRANT COUNTY — When driving down North Lake Road, its hard not to see the furniture.

The sofas and recliners had already been someone else's garbage before suffering months of wind and rain. Among the chairs are trash bags, oil containers and kitchen appliances no one wanted any more. Spent shotgun shells further pollute the already littered landscape.

The Chang family never imagined their land being used as a garbage dump. The property owners would occasionally come from Seattle to check up on the 167-acre parcel, but had never had any major problems. That is until they got a call from Grant County officials letting them know about the illegal landfill beginning to form on their property. Now the family is faced with a cost of up to $6,000 to clean up their property, and become complaint with Grant County codes.

"I guess we have to kind of clear up the trash on the land," Andrew Chang says as he looks over the piles on his family's property. "No matter who dumps this, it's our cost."

This was Andrew Chang's first time to his family's property, which he is currently looking after for his father Hsin-Lung Henley Chang. For Grant County officials though, The Changs' story is a fairly common one.

The problem is that one person will find a vacant, out-of-the-way piece of land, and then others will think the property is a dump site. The property then becomes a landfill of pesticide containers, dilapidated furniture and other appliances that Grant County officials will later have to inspect.

Jerry Campbell is the environmental health director for the Grant County Health District, and his office gets frequent complaints from citizens who will notice a dumpsite.

"What we see, if one place gets dumped on, it attracts other people," Campbell says, "they think, 'well this is a dump site.'"

According to Washington law, it is the responsibility of the property owner to clean up an illegal dump site. Sometimes county officials are able to find out who trashed a particular piece of property. If a person is caught dumping a cubic yard of waste or more, that person could be charged with a gross misdemeanor and could have to pay for twice the cost to clean it up.

When an area become a community dump site, that's usually when the county gets notified. The health district works closely with Grant County Code Enforcement. Code Enforcement Officer Tina Stoddard can enforce county litter ordinances. Stoddard's position is complaint driven, and she has visited about a half-dozen illegal dumping sites in the last year. Stoddard says the majority of her calls aren't illegal dumping calls though. Many of her calls deal with litter at people's homes.

When she is notified of an illegal dumping site, Stoddard's first step is to write a letter to the property owner. If she doesn't get compliance, she will send out a second, and possibly a third certified letter. Most of the time, she says, the process with property owners goes smoothly.

"It has to come back to the property owner, but if they're willing to comply," Stoddard says, "I will do what I can."

If health district or code enforcement investigators find medical waste, they have to send it away to be incinerated. If they find hazardous waste, than that has jurisdiction through the Department of Ecology. Marni Solheim with the DOE in Spokane says her group's role in illegal dumping situations is only when hazardous waste is involved. In most cases though, Solheim says the dumping is regulated through the local health departments.

Andrew Chang is working locally with Moses Lake realtor Ron Robertson to help clean the site. Robertson says he wants to find an answer to why the property is being trashed like this. Working as a realtor, Robertson has seen trashed property before, but he says he usually sees trashed homes after they have been repossessed. And he has never seen a dumping site of this size.

"It's hard to believe people's values would allow them to do that," Robertson says of the site, "lack of values I guess."

Campbell says the health district also encourages people to recycle, and says his office tries to make people aware whenever the county public works department holds a free dump day at county landfills. The reason people dump illegally however, is a mystery to Campbell's office.

"It just seems so obvious, you can't take the trash and put off the side of the road," he says.