Copperas Cove City Council hears presentation on illegal dumping, abandoned items
By LYNETTE SOWELL
Cove Leader-Press
During its workshop meeting on Tuesday evening, the Copperas Cove city council heard a presentation from Deputy Chief of Police Brian Wyers on the subject of illegal dumping and abandoned personal items at various locations in the city.
Wyers gave an example of 11 locations in the city that are “hot spots” for illegal dumping and also areas where vagrants leave their items after panhandling. The locations include near H-E-B, West Avenue B, East and West Business 190, Lutheran Church Road, North 1st Street and North F.M. 116, Constitution Drive along the right-of-way and vacant lots, vacant lots on Cline Drive, Walmart, Starbucks, Georgetown Road and drainage area along properties to include illegal dumping.
His presentation included several photos, including one near the intersection of Robert Griffin III Boulevard and Business 190. It is near a traffic control box at this location where it took code compliance officers two hours to clear out around 140 pounds of items left by a transiant indivdual .
Wyers also talked about the numerous donation boxes that are set up outside businesses, which are often overflowing with more than clothing, but furniture and trash stacked beside them.
The challenge is, are the businesses held responsible for this, or is the organization providing the donation box.
Part of the issue is the inability to “catch” someone in the act of illegally dumping or in the case of a transient violator, them “abandoning” the items in question.
Also, if there is no known address for an individual, how can they be cited? Wyers asked.
He also named one of the challenges being a lack of City resources to abate the problem areas and discussed if it was appropriate to hold businesses accountable for the actions of others, and how to make it equitable for businesses.
“If we’re cleaning up in front of H-E-B, does that mean Walmart is going to want us to start cleaning up in front of their store?” Wyers asked the council.
As far as dedicated clean-up crews, he said the city did not have a crew dedicated to cleaning up right-of-ways in the city, although some cities do have contracts with organizations that do.
Wyers said that in speaking with Texas Department Of Transportation reps, they have never heard of cities holding businesses accountable for cleaning up the right-of-way in front of their business.
“They said there is a contract between the City of Copperas Cove and TxDOT, called an MMA, and in that contract, Copperas Cove took on the challenge of cleaning up right-of-ways. That falls under our side of the MMA,” Wyers said. “TxDOT did say that they would come out if we had large items or needed help with a specific area, but within the city limits, they will refer back to the MMA.”
One solution has been supplementing support through volunteer organizations, such as Keep Copperas Cove Beautiful, Wyers said.
Councilmember Dianne Campbell commented that the problem has grown much worse over the last few months to a year.
“I think it’s incumbent on the city to dedicate some resources or combination from the city volunteer organizations, and even perhaps the business to more aggressively address this because if we allow it to continue, it will get worse,” said Campbell.
She said she spoke with city manager Ryan Haverlah about possibly adding more garbage collection on a regular basis or something to try to address the problem.
Haverlah told the council that as part of that discussion, he is concerned and that it would “further incentive” and that people would continue to drop and leave those abandoned personal items or illegally dump.
“How do we ensure that that resource is equitably covering all businesses that that do need that support? In my opinion right now, we’d have to add resources. We’d have to add a team to be able to provide that level of service. Right now, our Solid Waste Department is not fully staffed. We’re having to hold our drivers over to ensure that we are providing the minimal level of service to our community, which still continues to remain at a high level of service. But we’re really pushing our team to continue to provide that level of service right now,” Haverlah said.
As for the issue regarding the donation drop-off boxes at businesses, councilmember Joann Courtland discussed the one by Metro PC, that always seems to be brimming with items. Then, after it rains, it looks even worse.
The topic of regulating those boxes was discussed, and the council came to a consensus and asked Wyers to bring back suggested changes to the ordinance, regarding donation boxes at businesses within the city. This would be put on a future agenda for discussion.