What Do You Do?

[Cheli540]

Ok... here's a situation. Imagine a mound of broken glass, porcelain, and metal about 10 to 15 feet in diameter . It's located in a county park and the park that has a caretaker on premises . Cleaning up that much broken glass can be kinda dangerous if your not well prepared to do so and should it or should it not be the responsibility of the caretaker to make sure that kinda thing gets taken care of? I'm going to try and contact the park caretaker and make sure they know it's there (how could they not?) but... what would everyone else do? And what would you do if they refuse to attend to the situation?

[the 5 little bears]

I would think that when you let them know about your concern they will get it picked up or at least i would hope!

[Cheli540]

I sure hope they will deal with it! ...but you would think they would have dealt with it by now... the park has been there for years and is very well established .

[+Darkmoon]

It is like that everywhere...some people will do their job and do it well and others are just waiting on a paycheck! Talk to the caretaker about the trash area and if it doesn't get taken care of, see who the supervisor is and who up on the food chain you may need to talk too! Sometimes a little pressure from above does wonders on the people below! If all else fails, contact the park people for that city or county. Just my 4 cents worth...

 

Darkmoon

[+welch]

Even if they know or not, it may not be a major concern (is this an out of the way place in the park?)

Maybe you could nudge them by offering to help whenever you bring the problem to their attention. Worst case is they hand you some gloves/etc, but at least its getting done .

[+GeoBond007]

If you dont get any where talking to the staff. Hold a CITO Event and then tell the park staff what you did.

 

GeoBond007

[NightThree]

The Veazie Railroad Cache used to be by a dump with hundreds - maybe thousands - of tires in the middle of a Bangor park. I'd tried to find the cache a couple of times, but I went back once to find a huge pile of tires outside the trail system and the place itself mostly cleaned up. Looked a lot better! Here's what I'd do: try to contact the park administrator and see if they're aware of it (especially in the larger parks, sometimes stuff just goes unnoticed). Ask if they plan to clean it up. If they do, great; if they don't, ask if they'd be willing to have a group of people help clean it up on some specified day (an event). I think it's always best to let someone know about it before you actually go ahead with it... but it should definitely get done.

Edited January 13, 2004 by NightThree

[+Planet]

In some instances, what you describe is an old bottle dump from previous residents of the property before it was a park. It could also be 10 feet deep. You might not be allowed to dig or remove any bottles. Check the debris and see if you can date it. It isn't always just someone's garbage, it could predate landfills, and may have been there for years and years. Sometimes they could even hold rare old bottles still in one piece.

[Cheli540]

All good suggestions I must say! I did inspect the area for quite some time while I was there. It certainly looks like it was once a dump spot because of the amount of rubbish. Lots of old stuff and some new things as well. I can hardly beleive that this spot could go unnoticed though. The park is not very large and the mound of debris is only 10-15 feet off a paved path. Actually, my better half and I found it after following markings where it looked as if they were going to put in another path. So far the phone number I found for the park service hasn't contacted me with a live human. With the addition of the 4 inches of snow we got today, it looks as if spring will be a better time to head back to the park and concentrate my efforts on a little spring cleaning.