Published: July 09, 2009 09:42 pm      

Enforceability of Mercer County’s litter ordinance called into question

PRINCETON — Mercer County has a litter control ordinance in place, but exactly how to enforce its provisions is still being worked out.

In October 2008, the Mercer County Commission passed a litter ordinance limiting the amount of garbage a person can keep on his or her property and regulating illegal dumping. Warnings and penalties were included for each offense.

However, there are residents who keep seeing garbage on neighboring properties and illegal dumping that the ordinance does not appear to be addressing.

“At this point nothing has happened in my area,” said Paul Curto of the Murdock Street Extension near Princeton. “People are now dumping their brush along the side of the road. I’m just trying to get something done and try to get them to enforce the ordinance they’ve got, which they tell me they can’t do.”

Curto said he was not against the county ordinance itself.

“I think it’s a good ordinance, but it’s just that they don’t have anything in place to enforce it,” he said. “They tried a little bit in Brushfork when they found some guy who had dumped trash along the side of the road. Someone had hired him to take their trash. That’s fine. But did they reprimand him?”

Mercer County does not have the funds to hire and equipment a full-time litter enforcement officer, said County Commissioner Jay Mills. The county has to keep paying the Southern Regional Jail near Beckley for housing Mercer County inmates.

“It’s like this: with that regional jail bill, we’re paying at times $150,000 a month. It probably averages $120,000 or $130,000,” Mills said. “When I went in (elected) the debt was about $1.6 million. At one time it was down to $700,000. What we try to do when we have the money available is to make an extra payment.” This depends on tax collections, he added.

Hiring a litter code enforcement officer and equipping the officer with a vehicle could cost the county $30,000 or more a year, Mills said.

In mid-May the county commission decided against proceeding with a proposed countywide building code ordinance after the public expressed widespread opposition. Paying a building code enforcement officer could have proven difficult, too, if the ordinance had been approved, Mills said.

“It could have created more problems unless we could have gotten enough money coming in (from fees) to pay for it,” he said.

However, Mills said that he believed deputies with the Mercer County Sheriff’s Department could enforce the litter ordinance and issue citations in the course of their duties. Cleaning up all the properties and dumps in the county will be a major effort.

“This is a big thing and it’s going to take everybody to get it cleaned up. Don Meadows has been a good sheriff before and if we give him time to get into his job, he can do it. I’ve got full confidence in him. If there’s anything he can do, he will do it,” Mills said.

Meadows was appointed sheriff by the county commission on June 19 to fill the vacancy created when former Sheriff Danny Wills resigned.

“I want to study the ordinance, the way it’s written and get some clarification from magistrate court,” Meadows said Thursday. “There’s some question about whether the ordinance is enforceable in magistrate court.”

“If there’s no problem with it, we’ll certainly be out enforcing it,” he said. “This weekend I should get a chance to study it really good.” Meadows added he was going to speak with county magistrates Friday and hoped to have a better idea about the ordinance’s enforcement by Monday.

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com