Fifty or more years ago, people didn’t worry too much about their trash. Many dumped theirs at the first pullout heading out Lutak Road. Down went garbage, washing machines, even cars.
For some visitors, their first view of Haines was of a beachfront garbage dump. The rock outcropping became known as Garbage Point. Although a sanitary landfill was established and cleanup efforts were made at the prominent cliffside, the name stuck.
About 25 years ago, developers building the first homes there tried rebranding the area Nukdik Point but by then visitors were using a roadside pullout to snap waterfront photos of Fort Seward with its magnificent mountain backdrop and the area became known – mercifully enough for a tourist town – as “Picture Point.”
But old, bad habits die hard.
Garbage Point is being revived as a trash dump. The cliff bottom at the state’s first “scenic pullout” on Lutak Road is strewn with torn-open garbage bags, empty bottles, cookbooks, sofa cushions, a discarded shop-vac, car tires, appliances, and random plastic junk. Crowning the assortment is a stuffed trash bag, hung up and dangling from the branches of a tree, a flag of buffoonery flying high.
As said by a citizen of the European Union following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “Are you kidding me? In this day and age?”
Let’s review, class: Our first lesson as good girls and boys was to pick up after ourselves. Not even animals foul their own homes, we were taught.
Outrage is easy to muster in March, and the Cheetoh-in-Chief introduced us to soaring new levels of disappointment in human nature, so I’m keeping my cool on the Revival of Garbage Point.
Someone perhaps suffered a 1960s flashback and was transported back in time to when throwing full bags of trash onto another person’s property was an okay thing to do.
Or a struggling citizen, down to their last dollars and forced to choose between buying food or a trip to the dump, in desperation and shame pitched their garbage over the cliff, praying to God for forgiveness. It could happen.
Illegal dumping is a chronic Haines issue, mostly because we give ourselves a choice on trash disposal.
Many towns offer “free” disposal by simply adding its cost to annual property tax bills. Here in the land of the free we get to choose between behaving like responsible, decent people or like shameless freeloaders.
There are ways to catch freeloaders. We could root around in the dumped garbage for a mailed envelope or other identifier of the culprit. We could place game cameras in popular dumping areas and catch dumpers in flagrante delicto, a technique that has worked in Juneau.
Both tactics would cost the borough considerable time and money. Also, attempts at enforcement have failed for 40 years. There are 2,726 square miles in the Haines Borough. That’s a lot of room for dumping trash. Garbage Point is just one mile from the police station.
Instead of doing the same things that haven’t worked for decades, let’s start by trying something new. Let’s launch an education program, including ads around town asking people not to toss their garbage. Also, let’s offer folks who are struggling pre-paid orange garbage bags that can be deposited free to the private landfill on FAA Road.
The borough could pay for the bags and distribute them through the Salvation Army or the Haines Ministerial Council, which also serve as our town’s food bank.
It’s likely that most, if not all, people throwing garbage off cliffs are folks who simply can’t afford to pay for trash disposal. It’s not a crime to be poor and the poor deserve the benefit of some assistance.
Before getting the police and courts and Sherlock Holmes on this problem, let’s start by not assuming the worst about our neighbors but instead, ask them and help them do the right thing.
Call it friendly government.