Back in the mid-1970's, attention began to be focused on the problem of garbage disposal throughout the parish. Up until then, it was common behavior for residents (or someone paid by the residents) to pick up the garbage, take it to an end-of-the-road garbage dump, and deposit it there to be forgotten about. Over time several of those neighborhood garbage dumps became official parish "landfill garbage dumps," and the parish did what it could with the sparse equipment it had to keep them pushed down, levelled out and somewhat covered with dirt.
They then were called sanitary landfills. Some of the landfill dumps were reaching full capacity.
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It was an ongoing task to use parish road equipment on dump maintenance and that helped somewhat, but it often created more problems than it solved. Some of those problems included vandals and garbage pickers, people who climbed through the garbage to see if they could find anything of value.
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The City of Covington had a large city dump north of the city off of La. 25, and each Ward had its own garbage dump, more often than not in a low-lying area that needed to be "filled."
New federal environmental guidelines came along, particularly for low-lying wetlands, and government attention became laser-focused on doing something. It took a while to figure out what that "something" was.
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I remember going as a newspaper reporter to several police jury meetings, public hearings, and presentations by environmentalists and their lawyers about what shoudl be done, what had to be done, and possible ways to do it. Eventually, some research was done on what other parishes/counties were doing with their garbage, and St. Tammany had a number of interesting discussions about which one was the best.
One of the more interesting proposals was presented by an out-of-state garbage disposal company that would put a bunch of dumpsters at key locations throughout the parish, then residents would bring their own garbage to the dumpsters and put them in. The company would make the rounds once or twice a week to empty the dumpsters. It sounded like a great plan and the police jury was definitely interested and leaning towards that solution.
The company, during its presentation to the police jury, mentioned several counties and cities where it had provided the service and said they were all very happy with the operation.
Being the skeptic I was at the time, I left the police jury meeting, went back to the office, and began making several long distance calls to the actual county that had been mentioned during the meeting. I may have contacted the wrong individuals, I explained to them who I was and why I was checking on the performance of that particular company in their particular county. It was a simple question: we are thinking about hiring this company, and are they doing a good job?
Two hours later, I wrote my story. The counties that the company had bragged about were not always that satisfied with the way things actually turned out. Several of the people I talked to were not happy at all. So it pays to check up on promises and performances, especially when tons of garbage are involved.
News Clippings from the 1970's
