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By DEREK MOORE
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Darth Elledge has long faced the frustration of having to deal with other people’s trash.
Now, he’ll have to go it alone.
Sonoma County has stopped collecting trash illegally dumped alongside roads, a decision officials say is necessary to save money amid a massive budget shortfall.
For Elledge, a maintenance supervisor at Summerfield Waldorf School west of Santa Rosa, the change will require him to haul away trash left on Willowside Road adjacent to the 20-acre campus, adding to his job duties and the school’s financial expenses.
The most recent haul included a washer and dryer, scrap metal, stuffed animals and bug zappers.
“People spend money to send their kids here. It’s not good if it looks dumpy,” Elledge said.
County officials were divided last week over the impact of the stoppage. Some predicted that trash service would resume this summer, while others said it could disappear for three to five years.
West county Supervisor Efren Carrillo said the service cut is the result of a general fund deficit currently pegged at nearly $50 million that has forced supervisors and program managers to scale back or eliminate services.
“We are finding ourselves in a position of having to provide services with less money, and this is one of those,” he said.
Until two weeks ago, rural residents could expect the county’s Public Works and Transportation Department to handle the removal of trash dumped alongside county roads.
That’s no longer the case. A program for jail inmates to retrieve that trash as part of their community service ran out of money last week. The $60,000 program was funded by the county’s Waste Management Agency.
Last July, the county stopped assigning its own road crews to pick up the trash because of staffing cutbacks.
Tom O’Kane, the county’s deputy director of public works, said he expects more money will become available for the jail inmate program in July, the beginning of the next fiscal year.
“I would assume we would get an extension,” he said.
But without trash hauling service over the next three months — and perhaps longer — there is the risk that trash will pile up, much to the dismay of residents who will have to live with the mess unless they deal with the problem themselves.
Mark Matthews, a Sebastopol resident and retired real estate developer, was so upset by the trash he noticed along the rural roads near his home that he contacted the county, only to learn as Elledge did that the trash service has stopped.
Matthews said he counted a dozen mattresses near the intersection of Llano Road and Highway 116.
“It concerns me because one of the great benefits of living in Sonoma County is the beauty we have here as we drive around the hinterlands,” he said.
The county still operates a toll-free number (877-565-DUMP) for people to report illegal dump sites.
Employees at the Department of Environmental Health also are continuing to follow up on these reports and seek enforcement action, according to Walt Kruse, the agency’s director.
The agency will contact the transportation department to report trash violations that have occurred on county roads, and Kruse said he expects crews to remove that trash, despite budget challenges.
“I’ve never seen the county ignore a legal obligation of theirs,” he said.
The trash problem may turn out to be one of the visible consequences of budget problems that have led the county to cut programs. Crews no longer remove dead animals from roads, for instance, or clean out culverts.
“I’m not doing the maintenance I should be doing on bridges, and certainly not on roadways,” O’Kane said. “I’d like to be doing more sweeping and cleaning storm drains. We’ve just run out of people.”
Matthews said he understands why the county had to discontinue the trash service. He hopes community groups will step in to fill the gaps.
“It’s just a matter of putting energy behind it,” he said. “The county can’t do it because they don’t have the money. I’d put some effort behind it.”
Carrillo suggested that economic hardship is driving people to dump trash illegally to avoid paying garbage service fees.
But Elledge, who has dealt with illegal trash dropped off outside Summerfield Waldorf for many years, believes much of the problem is tied to small-scale trash haulers who are seeking to cut costs.
He points to the half-dozen or so cases each year in which Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies have traced trash dumped near the school to small-time haulers.
On two other occasions in the past year, deputies determined the trash came from the same apartment complex. The sons of the man who owns the complex had hauled away items from people who were moving out, according to Elledge.
He said deputies made the sons come and get the trash from the school and take it to a disposal site.
Elledge said the school spends about $1,200 every year in gas and garbage service fees to get rid of trash, some of it dumped on school property. In January, 15 tires were dumped at the school, each one costing between $3 and $15 for disposal.
Elledge estimated that he’s not had to pay disposal fees on about 90 percent of the trash he’s hauled away over the years because it was recyclable.
That points to the irony of people dumping stuff illegally in an effort to save money.
“You don’t pay. It’s just your gas,” Elledge said.
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raise the fines for people who dump trash and step up enforcement. let people who catch offenders in the act get a piece of the penalty money and every motorist will be snapping pictures with their phones of people dumping trash. or, allow local fire districts to give out tickets to offenders – and keep the money the tickets generate.