Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 9, 1993 TAG: 9305090153
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TED ANTHONY ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BLUESTONE STATE PARK, W.VA. LENGTH: Long
In secluded hollows modern conveniences have passed by, poor mountain residents still dump their refuse in the woods. Melting snow and spring showers wash much of it downstream.
"They've been doing this for generations," said Steve Wright of the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates dams and locks, where the jetsam flotilla collects.
"You'll get anything from refrigerators to bleach bottles. Tires seem to be a particular favorite," Wright said.
Cynics call it the "Milk Jug Armada." Army officers and environmentalists cannot agree on what to do. Many people in Appalachia consider it tradition.
Few coal companies built sewers and garbage dumps with their mining camps at the turn of the century. Outhouses routinely spilled into streams and families, newly dependent on manufactured goods, burned trash and threw it down the hill.
"It's always assumed that it's a cultural characteristic peculiar to the mountains. But it's more of a product of the political and economic situation in mountain communities," said Ron Eller, director of the Appalachian Center at the University of Kentucky.
"People who are powerless tend not to be concerned with keeping someone else's property attractive," said Eller, a history professor.
It posed little problem at first. But the disposable society replaced wood, paper and organic garbage with plastic, aluminum and more toxic items.
And poverty means municipal services often are still lacking.
"You don't have garbage trucks going up to the hills and hollows," Wright said.
Officials say garbage buildup is worsening and is more severe than usual this year.
"It's the spawning run of the Clorox bottles," joked John McCoy, outdoors editor at the Charleston Daily Mail.
McCoy remembers his boyhood neighbors discarding trash that way at the head of the Little Coal River in Logan You could have a Coke bottle go into the river in North Carolina and end up in the Gulf of Mexico Dean Bonifacio Bluestone Dam park ranger. County.
The problem is worst on the north-flowing New River, officials say, where 60 percent of the watershed is in Virginia and 22 percent is in North Carolina.
The New River's refuse accumulates first at the Bluestone Dam, in the higher Appalachians about 80 miles southeast of Charleston.
Later dams and locks stall the New's waste further before it is relayed into the Kanawha, Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
Thus, "you could have a Coke bottle go into the river in North Carolina and end up in the Gulf of Mexico," said Dean Bonifacio, Bluestone Dam's park ranger.
At the Bluestone Dam, there were enough floating tires on a recent day for 25 cars.
Refuse aplenty was scattered amid the decaying wood that dominated the clog of debris. The sprawl grew to 46 acres when the lake crested on March 26.
Other items sat on the crust: wooden pallets, thermoses, buckets, a dishwasher door, egg cartons, motor oil jugs, a 55-gallon drum, two basketballs, a porcelain toilet and scores of soda bottles.
Even an entire wooden outhouse protruded.
Officials said the muck was 12 feet deep and probably sturdy enough to stand on in places.
The logjam reduced water flow by 12 percent before it was released through the dam late last month.
"This is the worst I've ever seen it," Bonifacio said as he peered through a 9-foot-high machinery tire plucked by a crane.
Bonifacio conducts classes to teach children to revere the environment, but he said the mess suggests the message is not sinking in.
"I think it's the mentality of Appalachia. It's a contradiction. People just aren't respecting the land," Bonifacio said.
Kentucky author Harry M. Caudill wrote in 1962 of how garbage became a problem in the hills only when disposable items arrived and the Depression hit.
"As idleness continued and self-respect drained away, family dumps were established in backyards or on nearby creek banks. Heaps of ugly refuse began to dot the coal camps," Caudill wrote in "Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area."
Eventually, "miner and farmer alike turned to the creeks and streams" for disposal, Caudill wrote.
"The custom of getting rid of things by `throwing them into the creek' was allowed to develop all the force and acceptance of a folk custom," he wrote.
The situation escalated this spring when people downriver demanded that the Army be barred from flushing the debris through floodgates.
"They don't know what they're putting through. I've found medical waste in there: needles, bottles, all kinds of things," said Richard W. Smith, a member of "Save Our Mountains," an environmental group.
"Governor [Gaston] Caperton doesn't show this on his West Virginia commercials," Smith said.
Smith, owner of New River Scenic White Water Tours, said his business has suffered. He sought an injunction in U.S. District Court, charging the Army's passing of the muck violates federal law. A hearing date has not been set.
"We can't save the world, but maybe we can save this little piece here," Smith said.
The Army said the garbage buildup impedes its efforts to prevent flooding.
State officials say they periodically target hollows and other remote areas for "litter-getter" crackdowns to prevent waterway contamination.
Residents are asked to produce landfill receipts or point to a "garbage hollow" where refuse is dumped, said Mike Zeto, chief inspector of environmental enforcement for the state Office of Water Resources.
"We hit on it when we can and where we can," Zeto said. "Nobody likes to see their streams trashed. It's probably a small minority that's causing a vast majority of the problem."
Eller warns against categorizing the problem as cultural. He said coal, timber and railroad companies set a bad example by dumping their own waste on mountainsides.
"If you blame something on someone's culture, it tends to be their problem, not society's problem as a whole. I think blaming the culture of the region is essentially to blame the victim," he said.
As proof, he cites mountain areas in Virginia and the Carolinas where stringent disposal laws have all but eliminated the problem.
At Bluestone Dam, officials say their efforts alone cannot solve the problem.
"People say, `Clean it up.' It's not that easy. It's hard to get out there and touch all these little communities," Bonifacio said.
by CNB