Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Illegal dumping fouling up federal land

During a warm spell this fall, vandals hauled 18 decrepit televisions and computers down a narrow gravel road in Utah's picturesque Skull Valley, dumped them on a hillside, blasted them with guns and left them for dead. Nearby on the scrubby valley floor, other items have met the same fate: a hot water heater, paint cans, a candy vending machine, a couch and even a pile of mannequin heads. Illegally dumped garbage is piling up on federal lands, often creating toxic hazards and costly cleanups. And nowhere is it more apparent than on the vast, often-stunning tracts owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the nation's largest landlord with about 412,000 square miles, mostly in 12 Western states. "We can't keep up with it," Ray Kelsey, a BLM outdoor recreation specialist said on a recent trip to an outlaw dump site about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. "It's happening every day."...read more

If you "can't keep up with it", sell it to someone who can. By the way, the BLM has an annual budget of $1 billion, but they just "can't keep up with it." What that really means is their priorities lie elsewhere.

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