Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful Monday released reports for 6 counties from their Illegal Dumpsite Survey Program: Bradford, Carbon, Chester, Delaware, Montour, and Philadelphia.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has surveyed 61 counties, locating 6,244 dumpsites with a total estimated tonnage of 18,022.83 tons.    

Funding for this latest round of surveys was 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.

“The survey program is an important tool to raise awareness about illegal dumping in Pennsylvania,” DEP Secretary Mike Krancer said. “This most recent survey of six counties turned up more than 932 tons of waste that were dumped in both rural and urban areas across the state. Knowing the numbers, we cannot ignore the seriousness of this problem. I commend Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful for their work to combat it.” 

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 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 (Philadelphia was canvassed by a team of surveyors).

Standardized assessment forms are used to collect data, pictures are taken for documentation, and GPS coordinates are recorded for mapping purposes.  Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful surveys do not include private dumps or farm dumps.

Copies of the report are available online.

Since 1990, Keep PA Beautiful has been dedicated to empowering people to resolve and prevent these destructive problems by properly disposing over 87 million pounds of trash from Pennsylvania’s landscape as well as recycling over 4.9 million pounds of scrap metal and over 576,000 tires through cleanups and special collections.  

7/2/2012