The spring cleanup season this year coincided with discoveries of dumped trash and trashed areas.

A retired teacher with a heart condition hauled bags of trash, an old TV and other junk from a pullout near 16 Mile Saturday, a site she said is becoming more trashed.

“It’s increasingly getting worse. Last year it wasn’t nearly as bad as it is this year,” said 26 Mile resident Linda Huber, who moved to Haines three years ago.

Huber likes to fish at 16 Mile but the area is starting to look like a dump, with piles of sheetrock and burnt garbage, metal junk including an oil filter used for target practice at the river’s edge, bullet casings and spent shotgun shells.

She has arrived there to find campfires still smoldering.

“The bullet (casings) were just everywhere,” Huber said. “I’d really like to see a sign at the start of the road that says, ‘Pack it in, pack it out.’ People shoot at bottles and just leave the glass there.”

Huber advertised a cleanup at the site last week, but apparently was the only person who showed up. A pile of sheetrock and old TVs were among the items dumped there.

Huber said she would also like to see stricter enforcement of illegal dumping. “Maybe this year they’ll start giving citations. Maybe people will start cleaning up for themselves.”

She said there’s been similar dumping and shooting at 25 Mile, a popular skiing area.

Huber said Alaska is “God’s gift to us” and she doesn’t want to see trash piled up here like she has seen in the Lower 48. “This is not a trash can.”

Third-grade teacher Kristin White said 24 of her students participating in the school cleanup found a tent full of trash along a new nature trail across from the school April 21. White said the collapsed, two-person tent was found near a large viewing platform on the trail and contained enough trash to fill three wheelbarrows.

“It was a really good lesson because the children said, ‘Why would somebody do this?’ We had a discussion of waste in daily life and how to deal with it, and obviously not to do something like this.”

White said she considered writing a letter to the editor about the find. Her class filled bags to the brim with construction debris, plastic, and discarded bottles and cans.

“I thought the community was so clean because at first glance it appears so, but when you look closely, it isn’t so. When you see trash up close and personal, that’s when you really start to consider it,” White said.

Community Waste Solutions office manager Sally Garton said a person who purchased property on Small Tracts Road found nearly 9,000 pounds of household garbage in a house and around the property.

Garton said the trash appears to have been left by a number of residents over a period of years. “It sounds like it kind of grew from there.” The house has since been demolished. “This is the first time in my four years here we’ve seen something like this, but we heard there may be another in town.”

A similar cleanup was required at an upper valley home, where a new owner used a 20-foot container to haul off trash, Garton said. “The way it sounds to me, (it) is lower income families who can’t afford to even self-haul.”

Community Waste Solutions has previously considered offering a discounted rate for families who can’t afford to dispose of trash, Garton said. “No one has approached us (to dump at a reduced rate) but that has come up as something we could offer. There has to be some kind of accountability for lower-income families that can’t afford self-haul.”

Illicitly dumped trash is a sore point for Haines Chamber of Commerce executive director Debra Schnabel, who has unsuccessfully advocated for universal garbage service in the borough.

“The problem we have is like the problem with health care. You expect people to go out and pay for themselves. Some do and some don’t. We haven’t developed a reasonable approach to waste management, in my opinion,” Schnabel said.

During the chamber’s annual cleanup, borough workers picked up 55 to 80 bags of trash collected around town and left at corners, according to public works director Ralph Borders. Another 27 bags were taken to the Community Waste Solutions landfill.

In addition, school staff and students collected about 1,600 pounds of trash and volunteering borough workers collected 120 pounds between 2 Mile and 5 Mile Haines Highway.

Garton said the collection effort appears smaller than in past years and that resuming a competition between classes at the school might be a way to revive interest.

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