Toss and run

The trek to an illegal dump site in northeastern Bedford County that will be cleaned up later this year requires a long climb up a hilly, narrow road, around tight curves covered by lush foliage.

Near the Huntingdon County line, just over a slight slope, a cluttered mass of bags, boxes, papers, rusty metal and other miscellaneous items were recently dumped over the tree roots, wildflowers and dirt.

It's a lot like other dump sites in the area, said Guy Stottlemyer, watershed specialist with the Bedford County Conservation District.

"It's usually some spot on a road that's some distance from any houses," Stottlemyer said. "There's generally a little bit of a pull-off and a steep bank. The people who do it, even as disgusting as their practice is, they themselves also don't like it. They don't like to see what they've just dumped."

Recent dumping at this site might have been from an out-of-area college student, Stottlemyer hypothesized, scanning a hospital form, notebooks and other items in the debris.

"We've actually had people we've traced who are out of the county," he said, explaining that a Johnstown-area landlord dumped leftovers from a renovation project on someone else's land on his way to a property he owned in Bedford. "That came to a halt."

People who are caught dumping or linked to a dump site face a fine, at the least.

Cambria County Solid Waste Authority Executive Director Kris Howdyshell said the fine for littering - which would encompass the gamut of whatever is tossed at an illegal dump - is $300, although magisterial district justices have some leeway.

"On rare occasions, they give a $300-a-day fine for the amount of time the waste sits there. There's really no jail time unless it involves hazardous waste disposal," Howdyshell said.

Earlier this summer, two Tyrone men were photographed, along with their license plates, while dumping trash on state game lands just below the Tipton Reservoir. Roger Lee Lonsinger Sr., 49, and Samuel Howard Brisban, 59, were ordered to pay a fine and court costs.

The men cleaned up the dump site in July.

"Our state game lands are remote and consist of thousands of acres," said Blair County Wildlife Conservation Office Steve Hancszar, who charged the pair in the Tipton Reservoir area dump site. "We need the support and information of concerned, law-abiding citizens in order to be able to properly patrol state game lands. Some of these convenient illegal dump sites are near waterways and are potential pollution sources to public water supplies for Tyrone and Altoona."

Other negative consequences to illegal dumping include tangled equipment and injured livestock for farmers, wildlife hazards, mosquito breeding grounds and a host of problems for residential and business development, as well as tourism.

Illegal dump sites are sometimes used to hide even more illegal things, such as crystal meth lab remnants, which have been found across the state.

"By putting [a lab] into an existing illegal dump site, that could be a way to camouflage their actions," Stottlemyer said.

There are about 160 sites in Bedford County in mostly rural areas, many of them near township or county boundaries. Trash ranging from a half-ton to as much as 80 tons litters these sites, Stottlemyer said.

Areas near Blue Knob State Park in the northern part of Bedford County have been particularly hard-hit in recent times. A small contractor from the Claysburg area of Blair County recently dumped such things as shingles near the park.

"They haven't actually caught them in the act, but they know who it is," Stottlemyer said.

In Cambria County, game lands and rural roads have been a hot spot for illegal dumping, Howdyshell said.

"You won't find an area anywhere that's completely free of illegal dumping," Howdyshell said, noting the county has 67 known dump sites. "Our most effective tool for handling or combating it is solid waste practices at the municipal level. The communities that have required waste collection and provide collection for bulky waste generally see the least amount of bulky dumping."

In some instances, however, people from neighboring municipalities where waste pickup is not required will transport their garbage across the township line to dump it.

The biggest problem area in Cambria County is along the Route 36 corridor near Ashville. People either dump while traveling back and forth, Howdyshell said, or they make a point to go there specifically to illegally dispose of their waste.

Despite how widespread the illegal dumping issue is, Blair County Conservation District Resource Conservation Supervisor Mark Stockley said the problem seems to be easing up somewhat.

"It is slowing down," Stockley said. "If you look back 20 or 25 years ago, there was a lot more of this going on."

Huntingdon County has about 80 identified dump sites, said Celina Seftas, chapter coordinator for PA Cleanways of Huntingdon County.

"A lot of the sites we look at are pretty old," Seftas said. "As a chapter, we tend to pick some of these older sites to clean up. We've had pretty good success in keeping these sites clean."

Her chapter is working with local municipalities to find deterrents to stop the dumping, ranging from eliminating pull-off areas to seeding and mulching cleaned-up sites.

PA Cleanways, the nonprofit statewide organization that works to survey possible dump sites and clean them up, will be studying sites in Blair, Cambria, Clearfield, Huntingdon, Mifflin and Juniata counties this fall.

"We will have surveyors driving every public roadway looking for illegal dump sites," Program Manager Todd Crouch said.

Since 2005, 37 counties across the state have had dump site surveys, with 4,100 illegal dump sites with an estimated 14,500 tons of trash found so far.

The best ways to prevent illegal dumping is to report it immediately and volunteer to adopt a hard-hit area and keep it clean in the future.

"When trash appears, the goal is to get it out as quickly as possible," Stottlemyer said. "Trash attracts trash."

Cleaned-up areas are regularly monitored, and if someone is caught dumping, the fines are often much higher than the annual cost of garbage collection.

"We encourage people to properly dispose of their waste," Howdyshell said, adding that creating less waste will help the problem greatly. "It's a lot more cost-effective to them to do it right."