Bob Collins
Today’s what-are-they-thinking news release comes from the Department of Natural Resources, which reports its conservation officers are finding “various types of refuse” being discarded along Minnesota roads and waterways.
“We’re seeing everything from wooden fish house blocking materials on lakes to old appliances in roadway ditches,” said Col. Jim Konrad, DNR Enforcement Division director, said in the news release.
CO Jeff Humphrey of Cromwell just completed a litter investigation where numerous bags of household trash were dumped along a rural road. The contents were revealing.
“In this case they made significant effort to remove labels with names and addresses from their garbage, but I found a child’s name on a piece of homework and a wrist band from a local hospital,” Humphrey said. “A few phone calls and I identified my suspect.”
The reasons for their actions were likely economics.
“They said they did not have garbage service and usually take their garbage to their employers to get rid of it,” Humphrey said.
Sometimes a citizen helps a CO solve a litter case. CO Jeff Johanson of Osakis recently issued a citation to a man caught on a trail camera dumping waste on private property.
The individual was always very careful about removing items with any sort of identification on them. Finally, the property owner had had enough, put up a trail camera, and was lucky enough to get a guy and his vehicle on the camera littering.
“With the electronic evidence, the interview went pretty smoothly and the guy admitted to it right away,” Johanson said. “I made him clean up the waste and issued him a citation. Of course, he knew nothing about the countless other times things were dumped there; must have been somebody else.”
Assignment: Send me your photos of the junk you find on the side of the road, on the ice, or in the wild.
