Shawnee Co. Parks & Recs Officials rallying against illegal dumping

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - Shawnee County Parks and Recreation officials are asking the public to keep park dumpsters clean of personal items.

Parks and Rec Director Tim Laurent says the one at Oakland Community Center is a good example.

Laurent says items like mattresses, old furniture, and large boxes do not belong in public dumpsters.

They are also seeing an increase in construction waste, that Laurent says is overwhelming the dumpsters and creating a problem for sanitation workers.

“We’ve actually removed the dumpster that we had there previously, put a much larger dumpster in and that seemed to work for a while but now that dumpster is being overwhelmed with trash really every weekend and it’s not just household garbage we’re talking about its construction waste. There are a lot of things going into this dumpster and it gets too full so sanitation can’t dump it then, we got to come and out and clean it up enough so that sanitation can then dump it,” says Laurent.

Laurent says dumping personal items from home and construction waste is in fact illegal.

“We’ve got an issue all over the county really at all of our sites of illegal dumping. People dropping off trash in our dumpsters or around our dumpsters often filling them to the brim, specifically, the one where we are having the most trouble right now is at the Oakland Community Center,” says Laurent.

To combat the issue Laurent says the community center will have signage made up to inform the public as well as remove the dumpster.

“At Oakland, we are going to remove the dumpster altogether and we are going to use some trash carts for the community center. We’re going to see if that works and maybe sometime in the future we maybe be able to come back with a dumpster,” Laurent says.

Laurent says other locations like Garfield Community Center Park and Lake Shawnee are also seeing illegal dumping.

Copyright 2023 WIBW. All rights reserved.