For reasons local folks can't figure, seems everyone likes to dump their garbage in rural Tooele County.
Over the years, literally tons of trash - from household garbage to abandoned cars - have been illegally dumped alongside the highways and backroads of Tooele County, turning otherwise picturesque deserts and juniper foothills into unqualified eyesores."It's sickening. It's just downright sickening," grumbled one Tooele County resident, whose farm borders U-199 south of Tooele.
But residents are now fighting back. On Saturday, most of the residents of the community of Rush Valley (formerly the unincorporated communities of St. Johns and Clover) banded together with the Bureau of Land Management, three different Boy Scout troops and a contingent of volunteers from the Utah State Training School at American Fork to erase scars caused by years of illegal dumping in and around their community.
And it seemed virtually everyone turned out to help: mothers with children in tow, farmers with fleets of pickup trucks and ranchers with backhoes and front-end loaders. In addition, state and federal government employees - some of whom brought family members from Salt Lake to help out - came equipped with bulldozers and dump trucks.
Aptus Environmental Services provided a barbecue lunch to all volunteers, and several company employees also participated in the cleanup.
In all, some estimated at least 150 volunteers turned out.
"We're tickled to death," said mayor Odell Russell. "We sent a letter to every family asking them to take pride in their community and help out. And the response was just fantastic."
But Saturday's effort was far more than a simple community cleanup, says Dell Waddoups, realty specialist for the Bureau of Land Management. It marks the second step in what may become an ongoing effort by the BLM to deal with the statewide problem of illegal dumping on public lands. (The first joint BLM-community cleanup effort was in Box Elder County earlier this year.)
Additional cleanup projects are planned for the Vernon, Ibapah and Tera areas, also in Tooele County.
"This kind of dumping is some of the worst abuse of public lands you will ever see," Waddoups said. "And we're going to take whatever steps we have to to bring a halt to it. We have law enforcement officers (in the BLM) and we intend to use them and the Tooele County Sheriff's Office to prosecute if that's what it takes."
Officials say the route through Rush Valley has been a particular problem area, as some employees of the Dugway Proving Grounds find it easy to dump their household garbage alongside the road while driving to or from work.
In one area just outside Clover, illegal dumpers created a virtual landfill as garbage piled about a foot thick and covered an area estimated at about the size of a football field.
The problem of illegal dumping is not unique to Rush Valley. Tooele County, because of its proximity to the more populous Salt Lake and Utah counties, receives a disproportionate share of the problem.
"It doesn't make sense, but people will drive 60 miles out of their way to dump their household trash out here just to avoid a $2 tipping fee at the Salt Lake landfill," Waddoups said. "Even more ironic is they drive right past several landfills out here that are convenient and free."
While Rush Valley will look a whole lot better than it did before, Waddoups said it is more important to create a public awareness that such dumping is illegal and immoral. And by creating a greater sense of pride among rural residents of the county, the BLM hopes to enlist them in the fight against illegal dumpers on all public lands.
"There are a lot more of them than there are of us," Waddoups said. "We've got to get the locals involved in reporting illegal dumping and taking down the license numbers of those who do. It's a problem we have to get everybody involved in solving."
Waddoups said road access into some of the more abused areas will be closed and signs erected.