Monticello Live

All over Arkansas, and right here in Drew County, the dumping of household trash, appliances, old tires and other items continues.

Beyond that, dump sites create wildfire hazards and environmental concerns for the 19 million acres of forestland in Arkansas. What many residents don’t know is that several agencies, including Arkansas Forestry Commission (AFC) Law Enforcement Officers, Arkansas Game & Fish officers and County Sheriff’s departments, enforce and actively pursue investigations of rural dump sites and violators responsible for the sites.
How does this process work? When a complaint is received by one of these agencies, every effort is made by officers to determine the responsible party for the dump site, and to oversee a complete parameter cleanup. Officers carefully sift through debris, looking for identifiers that might point to an individual(s) accountable for the mess. Surveillance cameras are also a possibility, to create consistent surveillance of a site that might be re-visited. Furthermore, area citizens are oftentimes interviewed to possibly provide information that may lead to identification of violators.
If guilty individuals are identified as responsible for an illegal dump, a fine of up to $1,000, eight hours of community service, alongside a full dump site cleanup are all part of prosecution procedures. Additionally, the AFC requires violators to appear in a mandatory court appearance.

Residents can help put a stop to illegal dumping. If you have a dump site in your area, on your deer lease, forestland, or other natural area, or to provide information about those responsible for an existing dump site, file a formal complaint. Contact your Drew County AFC office by calling (870) 367-6767, or fill out an online complaint form at the AFC Law Enforcement link: http://forestry.arkansas.gov/Services/ProtectYourForests/Pages/LawEnforcement.aspx

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2015 at 6:43 am and is filed under Site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.