04/15/24 - 66 New Stories - REAL Environmental & Conservation Leadership In PA: http://tinyurl.com/msuwtctm
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Chester County Illegal Dumpsite Survey In Progress
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Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, in partnership with the Chester County Conservation District, has started surveying Chester County roads for illegal dumpsites.
The goal with this project is to identify and map every visible illegal dumpsite from the public right-of-way within the county. The data gathered will be summarized into a final report, which will be available to the public in June 2012.
Funding for the survey is provided through a grant from the Department of Environmental Protection. In order to develop a comprehensive strategic plan to address illegal dumping including public policy, proper resource allocation, community education, and cleanup and abatement efforts, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful embarked on a statewide illegal dump survey program in 2005.
Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful believes that in order to truly address the root causes associated with illegal dumping, the problem needed to be better defined. Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has surveyed a total of 55 counties, locating 5,759 dumpsites with a total estimated tonnage of 17,088 tons.
Illegal dumping mostly occurs in remote and secluded places, rural areas where few persons live, and the roads that are less traveled. However, for many people who are residents of an urban area, an illegal dump is often within a one-mile radius of their home.
Overall, very few people are aware of the widespread problem of illegal dumping in Pennsylvania. Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful’s illegal dump surveys educate state, county, and local officials, as well as citizens, about the problem of illegal dumping and provide valuable data about the dumpsites and the community in which they reside.
“The purpose of an illegal dump survey is to assess and document as many illegal dumpsites as possible within a county,” says Shannon Reiter, President of Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful. “The survey is a tool that can be used for planning purposes within a community, provide valuable insight into development of solid waste and recycling programs, and be used to gain support for funding for public awareness programs and education, as well as generate funds to clean the existing dumpsites.”
The survey process typically takes a year to complete. Municipalities, state agencies, environmental groups, and other key stakeholders are contacted and information regarding known dumpsites is gathered. Surveyors then document known and unknown sites driving public roadways.
Standardized assessment forms are used to collect data, pictures are taken for documentation, as well as GPS coordinates for mapping purposes. Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful surveys do not include private dumps or farm dumps.
Residents of Chester County that are aware of an illegal dumpsite are asked to contact Todd Crouch, Program Manager of Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, at 1-877-772-3673 to report the location of the site.
Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful is surveying 6 counties this year in addition to Chester County, including Bradford, Carbon, Delaware, Montour, and Philadelphia.
Completed surveys are available for download from the Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful website.
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10/24/2011 |
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