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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Editorial: Watchful citizens are best defense against trash

The Spokesman-Review

When tar balls washed ashore at Dry Tortugas National Park in the Florida Keys last month, they were thought at first to be from the Gulf spill, but an analysis ruled that conclusion out. More likely, the gooey lumps were from what Coast Guard officials call “spills of opportunity” – excess oil and bilge that ships sometimes discharge when crews take advantage of significant oil spills as cover for illegal dumping.

Volunteers who gathered in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest last week didn’t encounter any tar balls in the gravel pit they cleaned up near Hayden Lake, but they found plenty of auto parts, appliances, furniture and other trash, as Spokesman-Review writer Becky Kramer reported Sunday.

The task is not unique to Idaho. From one end of the United States to the other, illegal dumping squanders tax dollars, wastes public employees’ time, threatens human health and despoils our natural heritage. The nation’s largest landowner, the federal Bureau of Land Management, oversees 412,000 square miles of public lands and spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on cleanup activities.

Enforcement is a challenge. In North Idaho, illegal dumping is a misdemeanor that calls for up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine. But that’s assuming the scofflaws can be caught by limited park personnel who have remote expanses to patrol. The remote grandeur of our vast public lands offers a great setting to revive your spirit, but also, it seems, to discard your worn out water heater.

Everything from those ubiquitous appliances and auto hulks to meth labs, toxic waste and even exotic plants that become troublesome invasive species, not to mention tar balls – it all finds its way into the scenic areas that have been set aside, at considerable taxpayer expense, for conservation and recreation.

The one or two citations issued each month in the Panhandle Forest get at only a sliver of the problem. Sorting through trash for identifying clues is keen detective work but not the best use of personnel hired to tend the parks.

And it’s not as effective as the help provided by those who witness dumping and promptly report times, places and license numbers.

That, followed up by strict enforcement and prosecution – including maximum penalties – is needed to restore proper respect for our treasured public lands.

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