Jasper, Tenn., Alderman Steve LooneyJASPER, Tenn. — When the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation shut down Jasper’s “burn pit,” where city workers destroy debris picked up from residential areas, city leaders decided to end the pickup service instead of paying to dispose of the material at the Marion County landfill.
Not long after that, Mayor Paul Evans found out that’s against the law, too.
In 1994, city administrators decided to eliminate two days of garbage pickup per week in exchange for removing residents’ brush once a month. They put that in the form of a city ordinance.
“If we’ve got an ordinance that says we’ve got to pick it up, we’ve either got to pick it up or we’ve got to change that ordinance,” City Attorney Mark Raines said.
The ordinance includes restrictions on the brush removal. It mandates that the debris may be no longer than 36 inches, must be bundled and may not exceed 75 pounds.
When local residents found out the service had been suspended in January, many called City Hall complaining that they had brush already waiting for removal.
Evans instructed Streets and Sanitation Supervisor Tim Davenport to continue the monthly brush pickup to “get an indication” of what the price for hauling it to the landfill would be.
“There was a lot of brush out there that people piled up before this came up,” Evans said. “I took it upon myself to have this done. It’s in the ordinance, so I didn’t overstep my bounds.”
The city paid $292 last month to dispose of about nine dump truck loads of debris at the landfill, Davenport said.
“This is probably one of the slowest months of the year on brush,” he said.
Evans said city leaders wouldn’t know immediately what it’s really going to cost the city to dump at the landfill because the busiest time for that is in the spring and fall months.
Alderman Steve Looney said he would be “anxious” to see the results of the costs in the coming months.
“I’ll go out on a limb, no pun intended, that we don’t need to spend [money on this],” he said. “I’m for not picking it up instead of spending thousands of dollars to dump it out here in the landfill when we were burning it for nothing. That’s sort of silly in my opinion.”
Raines said Jasper could look into getting a waiver from TDEC to reopen the burn pit, which was closed only because it’s within 500 feet of an industrial facility.
“Each case kind of has its own set of circumstances,” he said. “All they can say is no.”
Ryan Lewis is based inMarion County. Contact himat ryanlewis34@gmail.com.