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Mike Pollard peers into a truck to make sure no leftover garbage remains after the truck dumped its load at the King George waste site, Virginia's busiest. The landfill's inspectors randomly check trucks in an attempt to reduce litter on local roads.
Inspector Mike Pollard (right) tells driver Ruben Vazquez |
HELLO THERE, Margie Scruggs of Fredericksburg. Remember the envelope you threw away?
It was a bright orange envelope with nice penmanship. It came through Charlotte, N.C.
Well, Margie, it was sitting on top of a dump truck Thursday, until an inspector at the King George Landfill saw it. Your letter was one of the reasons that a landfill inspector gave a verbal warning to Ruben Vazquez, a driver for Davis' Disposal of Spotsylvania County.
After you threw that letter out, it got lodged atop that big white dump truck that collects your trash.
So did a juice box, a "For Rent" sign, a soggy hunk of blue cardboard and a cigarette pack. Also: a piece of wood, shreds of The Free Lance-Star, a film negative, a magazine about tools and a snapshot of two ducks swimming.
Two months ago, it might not have caught inspector Mike Pollard's eye. He admitted the landfill had been lax on truck enforcement.
But garbage building up along State Route 3 prompted the landfill to crack down on maintenance requirements in early February.
A tractor-trailer must have a tarp fully covering its load. No trash can protrude. All loose trash has to be swept out before leaving the landfill.
So when Pollard was standing high atop the inspection platform Thursday, he noticed Margie's envelope.
Pollard spends two hours a day looking at a fraction of the 150 to 200 trucks that dump at the landfill, the state's busiest.
"We just have a no-tolerance, get-it-all-out type of policy," said Jason Pauley, the county's director of solid waste and recycling.
But a reporter observing inspections saw at least three drivers pass with trucks that weren't fully clean. A soggy tennis ball and plastic bag sitting atop one Davis' Disposal truck went unnoticed. In two other trucks, one or two sheets of wet paper were stuck to a trailer.
Pollard inspected 16 trucks and issued five warnings.
A majority of mesh tarps covering trash were not perfectly intact, but he gave warnings to those with holes larger than a fist.
One truck trailer had large holes in its metal sides, most covered by plywood. It did not receive a warning.
"I don't think that's even road-worthy," Pollard said. "I don't know who regulates that."
Each case requires discretion, Pollard said, in judging who's trying to flout the rules and who's trying to comply.
Between Feb. 12 and March 4, county inspectors looked at 75 trucks and issued 20 warnings.
Two drivers received second warnings, which prohibits them from dumping in King George for one day. A third warning means a week's ban; a fourth warning earns a permanent ban.
Some drivers, Pollard said, aren't concerned about the regulations. Some, he said, don't think it's their problem.
A driver for Rustin Transportation, a Baltimore-based hauler, said just that.
Pollard told the driver his tarp was six inches too short.
"I told them about it," the driver replied. "They know about it."
"We'll have to give you a warning for that," Pollard replied.
"It's not my job to put the tarp over there," the driver said. "You'll have to tell them. It's been like that forever. There's nothing I can do about that."
Frank Escamilla, Rustin's human-resources manager, said his company was not aware of the tarp complication. "Nobody informed us," he said.
The crackdown on tarps is not the only way the landfill has tried to clean up State Route 3.
Waste Management recently spent more than 300 hours cleaning up the road from eastern Stafford County to the King George post office.
"We have seen a definite difference on the roadways," the county's Pauley said. "It's almost a non-issue now. But we're not going to lighten up on it."
To reach ROB DAVIS: 540/374-5418 rdavis@freelancestar.com
