When reading the article regarding CHP’s hunt for the person who dumped the vehicle in Cobb, I couldn’t help but notice one of the comments. One attitude conveyed was to forget the crime and “just tow it.” As someone who spends my time working with people who care about Lake County and the health of our watersheds, my opinion differs considerably.

I applaud Officer Tanguay’s efforts to find the criminal that abandoned the vehicle on Cobb. I can only hope that a civic-minded person will come forward with the information leading to the apprehension of the guilty party.

The “just tow it away” attitude demonstrates the lack of knowledge about illegal dumping issues in our beautiful county and state. Cleanup and removal of vehicles, tires, appliances, construction and household trash costs us, the taxpayers, thousands of dollars every year. Who do you really think pays for these services? As we face another year of budget deficits, we need to reduce unnecessary expenditures wherever we can. In this case, the vehicle could have easily been disposed of legally, at no cost to the owner, during one of the many vehicle amnesty days held countywide.

The impact of illegal dumping on our watersheds is more than the costs of cleanup and disposal. The toll on the environment is even greater. As Officer Tanguay points out, trees were destroyed in this case. Most often I’ve seen car batteries left to leach battery acid into streams, computers dumped to release heavy metals into the environment, oil and sludge to drain out of drive trains, drug labs left to poison the surface and ground water, not to mention the erosion caused by dumping these and other items in the watershed.

If you are interested in being part of the solution and not the problem, I recommend joining one of the county’s many watershed groups. These groups consist of community members interested in the health of our watersheds. Each year members of these groups organize and host cleanup events to counteract this problem. For more information about joining a group, please contact the East Lake and West Lake Resource Conservation Districts at 707-263-4180, Extension 12.

Greg Dills is the district manager/watershed coordinator for the East Lake and West Lake Resource Conservation Districts.