Illegal dumping has town poised for crackdown

A spate of illegal dumping in the Town of Saukville has officials talking about installing signs and cameras and developing an ordinance to put a stop to the practice.

“We’re going to look at putting some teeth behind an ordinance,” Town Supr. Curt Rutkowski said.

Someone recently dumped scrap lumber, furniture, doors and other items in a remote roadside ditch.  

“It took two trailer loads of stuff and a good amount of time to wrestle that stuff out of the ice,” Rutkowski said, costing the town a few hundred dollars to pay someone to remove it.

Rutkowski said dumping has always been a concern, “but this is kind of a high water mark in terms of volume.”

Litterers usually pick remote areas of the town where there’s no lighting to dump material, he said. 

But illegal dumping has also become a problem at the Town Hall, where people will leave items in the parking lot, not even bothering to put it at the nearby recycling dumpster. 

“I don’t think it’s a case where they are unable to comply with dump hours,” Rutkowski said. “I think the motivation is they don’t want to pay the $30 charge to dump a couch. 

“I guess I’d rather they dump it in the parking lot than some ditch on the side of the road.”

The Town Board recently directed Town Attorney Sarah MacCarthy to draft a littering ordinance that would carry a fine for dumping. Supervisors also are looking at installing trail cameras at popular dumping spots and at the Town Hall.