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Paint Dumped into storm drain on Windham Lane
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Laura Mol & Mike Smith
January 30, 2006
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First call
Tara O'Hara, walking in Sligo park near Windham Lane (about halfway between Dennis Avenue and University Blvd), saw the milky appearance of the water as it was flowing from an outfall pipe in a culvert that runs east from Windham Lane and under the hiker-biker path toward the nearby mainstem of Sligo Creek. Tara went to a Friends of Sligo Creek display box near the Dennis rec center, where she had seen reporting information posted. She tried to call the "dump" hotline from her cellphone, but the phone number was incorrect, so she called Laura Mol, also listed at the sign-box. Laura lives nearby and is "steward" of the Dennis-Windham section for Friends of Sligo Creek.
Response
Steward Laura Mol turned to webmaster Clair Garman for coaching on what to do: he had handled similar problems and had quick access to the numbers for reporting pollution and dumping that are listed on the Sligo Friends website.
County: 240-777-DUMP State: 1-866-633-4686
Laura then called the county Department of Environmental Protection (a recording on the weekend) and then the state Department of the Environment. There was also a recording there but quickly a human (Gary Zour) called back, asking for details; he then turned the information over to the "duty officer," Carol Oates, who was on-call for the weekend; she asked that we call back if we could learn more.
Laura turned to the Sligo Friends website, looking for people who had volunteered an interest in photography when they filled out membership information - such information is available to stewards and committee leaders from a list maintained by Lenore Boulet. Laura also needed the phone number for the Sligo Friends' lead person for water quality, Mike Smith, who in turned out, had a digital camera himself.
Back at the Creek
Quickly, Mike Smith went to the Creek and, as an experienced water quality monitor, checked a couple physical measures. He took some digital pictures, and he and Laura collected a jar of the milky water coming from the outfall pipe.
Two people new to the neighborhood, Tom Neltner and Janet Fox, walking in the park at the time, had also become concerned about the color of the creek water. They left the park and walked west into the neighborhood, looking for the source of the problem and they found it; someone had dumped white paint into a storm drain in front of 1508 Windham Lane, at the corner of Jewett. Janet noticed that the back wall of drain showed signs of an earlier paint splash, as well.
Fine-tuning the report
Laura called back the state officer and provided the new information, which the officer said will be communicated to regular staff on Monday and someone sent to investigate in the week to come. Laura inquired about penalties for offenders and was told that "willful violation" carried a $1,000/day administrative penalty, and a $10,000/day civil penalty. Was it duplicative to report the violation to both state and county? No, she was told - that was the right thing to do.
What to do now?
Can we leaflet the immediate neighborhood to use the opportunity to build community awareness of what harm dumping can do to the Creek?
Does the county Department of Environmental Protection have a handout about the danger to the creek of dumping paint (as they do about dumping oil or trash)?
Should Friends of Sligo Creek create something bilingual?
