Garbage in Mountain Streams: A Sad Tradition of Appalachian Spring : Environment: Poor mountain residents often dump refuse in the woods, where snowmelt and showers wash much of it into the waters. Remedying the problem proves difficult.

If it’s an Appalachian spring, that must mean dogwoods blooming on the hillsides--and plastic jugs bobbing in the streams.

In secluded hollows modern conveniences have bypassed, poor mountain residents still dump their refuse in the woods, where melting snow and spring showers wash much of it downstream.

“They’ve been doing this for generations,” said Steve Wright of the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates dams and locks where the jetsam flotilla collects.

“You’ll get anything from refrigerators to bleach bottles,” he said. “Tires seem to be a particular favorite.”

Cynics call it the “Milk Jug Armada.” Army officers and environmentalists cannot agree on what to do. But many people in Appalachia consider it tradition.

At the turn of the century, few coal companies built sewers and garbage dumps with their mining camps. Outhouses routinely spilled into streams, and families, newly dependent on manufactured goods, burned trash and threw it down the hill.

Because of the area’s extreme poverty, modern-day municipal services such as garbage collection often are nonexistent.

“It’s always assumed that it’s a cultural characteristic peculiar to the mountains,” Ron Eller, director of the Appalachian Center at the University of Kentucky, said of the dumping. “But it’s more of a product of the political and economic situation in mountain communities.

“People who are powerless tend not to be concerned with keeping someone else’s property attractive,” Eller said.

The dumping posed little problem at first. But then the disposable society replaced wood, paper and organic garbage with plastic, aluminum and more toxic items.

Officials say the garbage buildup is worsening, and is more severe than usual this year.

The problem is worst on the north-flowing New River, experts say, where 60% of the watershed is in Virginia and 22% is in North Carolina.

The New River’s refuse accumulates first at the Bluestone Dam, in the higher Appalachians about 80 miles southeast of Charleston. Later dams and locks stall the waste further before it is relayed into the Kanawha, Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Thus, “you could have a Coke bottle go into the river in North Carolina and end up in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Dean Bonifacio, Bluestone Dam’s park ranger.

At the dam one recent day, enough tires were floating in the water for 25 cars. Refuse aplenty was scattered amid the decaying wood dominating the clog of debris. Other items sat on the crust: wooden pallets, Thermos bottles, buckets, a dishwasher door, egg cartons, motor oil jugs, a 55-gallon drum, two basketballs, a porcelain toilet and scores of soda bottles.

Even an entire wooden outhouse protruded.

The sprawl grew to 46 acres when the lake crested on March 26. Officials said the muck was 12 feet deep and probably sturdy enough to stand on in places; the logjam reduced water flow by 12% before it was released through the dam late in April.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Bonifacio said as he peered through a nine-foot-high machinery tire plucked out by a crane.

Bonifacio conducts classes to teach children to revere the environment, but the mess suggests the message is not sinking in, he said.

“I think it’s the mentality of Appalachia,” he said. “It’s a contradiction. People just aren’t respecting the land.”

In 1962, Kentucky author Harry M. Caudill wrote of how garbage became a problem in the hills only when disposable items arrived and the Depression hit.

“As idleness continued and self-respect drained away, family dumps were established in back yards or on nearby creek banks. Heaps of ugly refuse began to dot the coal camps,” Caudill wrote in “Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area.”

Eventually, “miner and farmer alike turned to the creeks and streams” for disposal, Caudill wrote. “The custom of getting rid of things by ‘throwing them into the creek’ was allowed to develop all the force and acceptance of a folk custom.”

The situation escalated this spring when people downriver demanded that the Army be barred from flushing the debris through floodgates.

“They don’t know what they’re putting through. I’ve found medical waste in there--needles, bottles, all kinds of things,” said Richard W. Smith, a member of an environmental group called Save Our Mountains.

“Governor (Gaston) Caperton doesn’t show this on his West Virginia commercials,” Smith said.

Smith, owner of New River Scenic White Water Tours, is seeking an injunction in federal court, contending the Army’s passing of the muck violates federal law and is hurting his business.

“We can’t save the world,” Smith said, “but maybe we can save this little piece here.”

State officials say they periodically target hollows and other remote areas for “litter-getter” crackdowns to prevent waterway contamination.

Residents are asked to produce landfill receipts or point to a “garbage hollow” where refuse is dumped, said Mike Zeto, chief inspector of environmental enforcement for the state Office of Water Resources.

“We hit on it when we can and where we can,” Zeto said. “Nobody likes to see their streams trashed. It’s probably a small minority that’s causing a vast majority of the problem.”

Eller, a history professor, warns against categorizing the problem as cultural. He noted that coal, timber and railroad companies set a bad example by dumping their own waste on mountainsides.

“If you blame something on someone’s culture, it tends to be their problem, not society’s problem as a whole,” he said. “I think blaming the culture of the region is essentially to blame the victim.”

As proof, he cites mountain areas in Virginia and the Carolinas where stringent disposal laws have all but eliminated the problem.

At Bluestone Dam, officials say their efforts alone cannot resolve the situation.

“People say, ‘Clean it up.’ It’s not that easy,” Bonifacio said. “It’s hard to get out there and touch all these little communities.

“In a time where the people are on the government for spending too much, the people have some control here. They could be helping themselves.”