Police jury: Call in your big trash

The newly elected Lincoln Parish Police Jury is taking steps toward developing a plan to prevent and combat litter in the parish.

In the first Solid Waste Committee meeting of the new jury term, held Tuesday, members sought immediate and long-range solutions to what committee chairman T.J. Cranford called “a terrible litter problem throughout the whole parish.”

While most of the meeting centered on rolling out new programs, policies or parternships to tackle the problem, officials also believe one little-known service that the jury already offers could help curb the issue.

“We actually offer a program where if you call the landfill, you go out and put that couch, that refrigerator, that washer or dryer at the end of your driveway, if you call us, we’ll come pick it up,” Parish Administrator Courtney Hall said.

Jurors said the parish’s litter woes are multiplied by an overflow of these larger items being illegally left at dumpster sites, rather than taken to the landfill.

But residents outside municipal limits can instead have the landfill come to them when they want to dispose of such items.

“We need to let our constituents know about that,” District 2 juror Karen Ludley said.

Known as the Residential Boom Truck Collection Policy, it allows residents to call the landfill at 318-251-5159 to schedule up to one pickup per month of yard waste, large appliances and other bulky waste such as furniture.

Limitations include no pickups on private roads, no debris from a contractor’s work and no hazardous material or tires.

“It’s an awareness factor,” Hall said Wednesday. “We’re just trying to figure out how we can get that message out to more people. That way there will be less abuse at the dumpster sites.”

The committee reviewed a 2023 litter study performed by Keep Louisiana Beautiful and Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser’s office.

It rates US Highway 80 in Lincoln Parish as the second-worst stretch of road in the state when it comes to litter.

“We can’t have that,” District 5 juror Logan Hunt said.

The committee authorized Hall and his staff to investigate options for a “multi-pronged” approach to litter abatement and prevention and to present their findings next month.

Jurors agreed a key to tackling the issue will be cracking down on illegal dumping and dumpster diving activity.

A parish litter ordinance that hasn’t been updated since 2004 lists fines and community service hours as penalties for breaking the dumping rules.

But court proceedings to enforce these penalties are supposed to be carried out in justice of the peace court, which Hall said Lincoln Parish justices of the peace don’t currently do.

So jurors instructed him to come up with recommendations for updating the ordinance, as well as investigate what it would take to equip local justices of the peace to start holding litter court.

Other ideas included mail-outs and social media campaigns to educate the public on proper dumpster use, raise awareness for the call-in service and discourage litter by making the penalties more widely known.

But no matter the short-term abatement strategies, Hunt said he believes litter won’t go away while the “structural problem” that is the dumpster system remains.

He brought up consolidating the dumpster sites into more fenced, gated and manned “megasites” that could be more easily supervised and kept clean — one of several proposed solutions that have been discussed for years.

“I think there’s clearly a correlation between, we’re no. 2 on (the most littered roads) list, and this is our system here,” Hunt said.

District 10 juror Milton Melton said he believes megasites would help, but they’d also anger residents who are used to having dumpsters nearby.

“Megasites is a good idea, but we’re going to be catching more flak when we start trimming these dumpster sites down,” he said.

District 9’s Joe Henderson said the jury should “take the heat and do it.”

The vote to task Hall and his staff with developing recommendations for all these plans was unanimous.