Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993 TAG: 9302070098
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLYNE H. McWILLIAMS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
TAKING OUT OTHER PEOPLE'S TRASH
Jim Woltz did more than take his garbage out. He took it out for the entire neighborhood.Woltz cleaned up an illegal roadside dump that wasn't on one of his properties on Bent Mountain in Roanoke County.
The dump was on Sugar Camp Creek Road off Virginia 221 near a farm Woltz has owned for about 20 years.
"The people who live here, didn't dump here," said the owner of the Roanoke real estate and auction company Woltz & Associates. "And no one else in the neighborhood could do it."
After trying since 1988 to get financial help from the county, Woltz said he decided to do the cleanup on his own and then ask the county for some money back.
Refrigerators, cars, tires and other appliances lined the side of the steep ravine on the narrow dirt road on Bent Mountain. Woltz said it took seven men and three large machines 10 days to clean the area. Another crew will have to go in to pick up by hand small pieces of debris that still linger around the edge of trees. Woltz estimates that cleaning the dump will cost $7,000. He's already spent $5,000.
Ironically, during the regular Roanoke County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, a proposal is up for approval on whether to set aside an incentive fund to help efforts like Woltz's.
The proposal was submitted by Terrance Harrington, director of planning and zoning. Harrington said the proposal is a result of the continuing problem of illegal dumping in Roanoke County and the financial inability of landowners to clean up the areas.
He added that the proposal was indirectly caused by Woltz's earlier attempts for assistance.
If the supervisors approve the proposal, $10,000 will be allotted to help the landowners with county tipping fees, the cost of dumping waste in the new county landfill.
The Smith Gap Landfill will open in October. Initially, the tipping cost at the site was reported at $35 per ton of solid waste. According to information Woltz got recently from the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority, the fee will be $60 per ton.
Harrington, however, said $10,000 would be enough to start the fund.
"It's another strategy we're trying to pursue to get [illegal dumps] cleaned up effectively," he said.
Landowners would have to complete a written application for funding to the county. The application would then be evaluated against a set of criteria for distributing the money.
Although the criteria are still being developed, they would include items such as the location of the dump site and the landowner making a proposal on how to prevent dumping from happening again.
Requirements will also require that landowners arrange for removing the materials and that refuse only contain materials that can be safely dumped in the landfill.