Winter is coming here at 45 degrees north. That means my township’s solid waste transfer station will be reducing its hours and removing the seasonal bins for large items. Through the winter, we will still be able to haul our regular household trash and recyclables there on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. But the window is closing for disposal of things like the worn-out, lumpy mattress and box springs we wanted gone.

Not that long ago, many rural families had a place out back where stuff like that got dumped. It wasn’t ideal, but it’s not like there were many options. Nowadays, local government units are responsible for ensuring “easy access” to appropriate solid waste disposal options. But Wisconsin only passed its solid waste reduction, recovery and recycling law in 1990. In the 10 years it took to implement, people were still going to rural landfills to watch black bears rummage through garbage before it was managed with open burning and bulldozing.

For those who don’t remember that implementation and the time before it, a Hogwarts-style pensieve would come in handy. I could show you memories of a time when used motor oil was spread on gravel roads to keep the dust down. When throwing an old tire onto a burning trash pile was common (it burns hotter that way), and burn pits were an accepted means of waste disposal. When waste management was a concern for more populated areas, rural people just made do.

Nowadays, when people buy rural property, they’re not happy to discover they’ve acquired some forgotten midden heap. And you can’t blame them. Who knows what’s been leaching into the soil and groundwater from discarded refrigerators, fuel tanks, motor vehicles, and containers used for agricultural and other chemicals? Clean-up can be expensive. 

But I find it frustrating to hear people gripe about the legacy of others’ actions and then, in the next breath, complain how government infringes on their right to do whatever they want on their own land. Or about taxes that just about cover the operation and tipping fees for a transfer station, but not curbside pickup. I think it’s safe to say that many rural people think common sense should prevail. I don’t disagree, but unfortunately, that is often not quite sufficient. 

So historically, free people confer legitimate authority on the government to adopt and enforce laws and regulations to protect people and society, individually and collectively. We vote for representatives to oversee our interests at the local, county, state, and federal levels. When we’re frustrated with their (choose one) overreach, OR underperformance, OR perceived lack of common sense, we can show up at the polls to choose different representation. Or not: Not voting yet complaining about unsatisfactory representation is certainly common. 

But maybe we can find a place at the intersection of personal rights and responsibility where we can agree on some norms of behavior – individual and collective. If we can apply them to solid waste disposal, maybe we can also apply them to other issues where we seem hopelessly divided.

So let’s talk about the long and ugly tradition of getting rid of junk by dumping it along some country road. People dump unwanted furniture, appliances, building materials, deer carcasses, and other debris. They dump on public lands and private lands. They dump where they think they won’t get caught. 

Not that long ago, many rural families had to dump unwanted stuff “out back”. (Photo by Donna Kallner / The Daily Yonder)

They may tell themselves they’re not hurting anybody because the place looks deserted. Or that some items are biodegradable – like a big banana peel, only it takes longer to go away. Mostly, I think they know they’re turning their problem into someone else’s problem, or they wouldn’t dump in the dead of night.

Improved rural broadband connectivity can’t come fast enough for people who live near so-called wild dumps – places where other people’s bad choices are a perennial problem. My latest lottery fantasy is to fund grants that help rural people buy the latest, greatest trail cameras to aim at those spots. I don’t know if that would deter dumping any more than doorbell cameras deter porch pirates. But wouldn’t it be satisfying to announce remotely, “You have been captured on video, which has been forwarded to law enforcement.”

But consider this: Even stiff criminal or civil penalties probably wouldn’t eliminate some problems associated with rural solid waste disposal. It’s just plain hard for some of our neighbors to manage their trash, both the big stuff and their everyday household waste.

For example, where I live, we have to haul our own trash to the transfer station or arrange for someone else to do it. That can be a challenge for homebound elders without someone able-bodied who is willing and available to transport garbage during the transfer station’s limited open hours. Without the means to pay for disposal, it’s not unusual for stuff to just pile up.

There’s a lot of rural pride in our default response to problems: Community comes through. Except when it doesn’t – for which there can be very good reasons. For example, two different people in a neighborhood near me shared their concerns about a homebound elder. A mountain of garbage bags had collected outside his garage. Neighbors were reluctant to offer help in hauling it away. They had concerns that bags (probably containing used incontinence products and other bio waste) could leak or break during transport. There were also concerns about taking possession of trash that might contain drug paraphernalia left by visitors to that residence. People who meet their own obligations to remove trash may have compassion for someone unable to do the same, and yet be stymied in how to resolve a situation like that. 

There are also times when local government is stymied in its efforts to balance compassion and responsibility (including fiscal responsibility). For example, in 2007, an F3 tornado hit just over a mile from my house. Clean-up began almost immediately, which is what rural communities do. Ten years earlier, local government probably would have just bulldozed tornado debris from structures into the town’s landfill. So no one checked with the DNR or the township’s waste disposal contractor to make a debris plan before word spread that people could haul that stuff to the town’s transfer center. 

Once it was there, that debris became the municipality’s responsibility, and the price tag was a whopper. To reduce costs, the town had to physically sort a mountain of trash into separate components. They were allowed to burn clean wood at the site. But non-burnables – including siding, shingles, insulation, drywall, windows, and treated lumber – had to be hauled by a garbage contractor to an approved disposal site. 

Eventually, the town got some reimbursement for expenses from a state emergency management disaster program. But there is a lot of paperwork that has to be done to get help like that. 

That’s something to think about when you’re voting for your representation in local government. Preferably before flooding floats pre-cast concrete septic tanks onto your property and you need help figuring out how to get rid of them. Yes, downballot races matter.

I’m grateful that we have better choices than burying our old mattress and box springs at the edge of our property or dumping it on a dead-end road some dark night. Bill and I got those pieces loaded on his pickup truck and hauled to the town’s transfer station in September. The guy who manages the transfer station helped Bill unload and stack them with other stuff people wanted to get rid of. The town pays the tipping fees. And the property taxes we pay contribute to making it possible for our community, as well as our household, to benefit. 

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Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Illegal Dumping Prevention Guide has helpful information including prevention strategies for communities.

This article is shared through a Creative Commons License and originally appeared on The Daily Yonder

I think, back in the day, people used whatever they could for as long as they could. They weren’t a “ dispose and replace” people like today. Also, back then, things were built to last. You could be dirt poor but that didn’t mean you lived dirty or with junk all over your property. My own paternal grandparents had a place at the edge of their property where they disposed of anything that could not be used or salvaged. They would never dream of dumping anything anywhere else. They respected their neighbors and themselves too much to do that.