The downsides to living down stream

derky17

This weekend we had a good amount of rain fall, which we desperately needed BUT it also brings with it the unsightly remains of the apartment complex upstream from us.  (I can only deduct that it's the apt complex, though I'm tempted to first approach the other homeowners along the stream first.)  Styro packing peanuts, cups, soda bottles, straws all found its way to my lakesides, but the worst....were the numerous cigarette butts.  Its actually disgusting how many there were.  I know that my across the stream neighbor and his wife don't smoke, so it's from somewhere up stream.  I can only imagine how many of these things our turtles, birds (heron in particular) and fish might eat....terrible.  Gross. 

Anyone have ideas to discourage this sort of dumping?

SuperGreen

That sucks, I'm sorry!  I don't have any ideas unfortunately, that's a tough thing to prevent.  Virginia has an "adopt a stream" program where you can volunteer to clean up streams, maybe you could adopt the stream that leads to your lake?  If you keep the stream clean, there would be less debris on your lake during rain events.

CutesBoots

A lot of that sounds like general road-side trash and not so much evidence of an illegal dump site.  I have seen county reports where illegal dumping is investigated (and hopefully prosecuted).  The items counted included things like: bagged trash, yard waste, electronics, TVs, furniture, mattresses, batteries, etc.  It's stood out in my mind that one report specifically said that adding signs like "no dumping" typically only excerbated the problem by sort of giving people bad ideas.

It's sad that some people will toss their trash outside their windows, and you find stuff along roadways like bottles, cans, take-out containers, etc.  One way to fight this is to join an adopt-a-highway type of program, or river cleanup program.  I participated in a river cleanup group in college and it was actually really fun because we'd collect trash while canoeing down the river.

derky17

Yes, you are both right--it's not really "dumping" since it's not bags full or anything.  During droughts the stream will completely dry up--it's really small and I don't know that it actually has a name (though our lake does).  The nice thing about the folks in my neighborhood is that we do clean it as much as we can, even though we know we're not the litterbugs that do this.  That's why I think I might be able to approach the homeowners first and see if any of them smoke--there'd only be around 4-5 of them to check with, and hopefully they'd be reasonable.  This stream is VERY hidden within our neighborhoods so there's a very finite amount of people that probably even KNOW about this stream and these lakes and that first/feeder lake is in the apt complex.  I'd like to think that the person/people doing this just don't realize their impact to the rest of the surroundings.  It depends on the day as to whether I believe that or not.

doglove

Are you in a small community or a semi-large city or suburb? I agree that litter doesn't really constitute an illegal dumping or illicit discharge, but chances are that if you're in NC than you're probably within a Phase I or Phase II city and could probably work with your local government to educate your neighbors regarding dumping of litter and trash.

I work for local government, specifically in stormwater and work to do a lot of this education. You can also contact your local government to see if you or they could form a stream clean up group for your section of the stream.

Unfortunately though, it boils down to lazy people who don't care very much and there's not a whole lot of penalties that LG can enforce, unless they're dumping things like grease, oil, paint, etc. into the stream.

elviebird

I agree with doglove, I also work with a local stormwater utility (small world!) and you might be able to call and at least have someone come out and distribute some educational materials to the people upstream.

Unfortunately, as pp said, it might just be runoff from the roads near you going into storm drains.  There's not a lot to be done if this is the case.