Kildallan group clear 260 bags of rubbish

The devastating impact of illegal dumping has been shockingly laid bare through the efforts of increasingly frustrated communities throughout the county who engaged in the recent Spring Clean campaign.

Staff in the waste management section of the local authority are understood to be inundated by requests for assistance to haul away the mounds of full refuse sacks brimming with rubbish collected by communities in recent weeks.
More than 260 bags of rubbish were collected in the rural parish of Kildallan, located between the towns of Belturbet and Ballyconnell. Among the rubbish discovered is a continuation of a worrying trend which has seemingly emerged, that of dumping the carcases of dead animals. The rotted partial skeletal remains of an infant calf were found by community cleaners when they took to clearing litter in their local area.
More than 40 volunteers took to the roads and laneways in the community towards the end of last month, where along with the dead animal remains dumped in a drain at Dring, they came across bags of domestic waste containing nappies, avocado skins and coffee sachets binned on local forestry land. Along with that, dozens of pet food containers, as well as a paint bucket recovered from a nearby stream were also collected.
The dumping of televisions, despite being free to recycle at various local bring and recycle centres in the county, has also become an apparent growing trend.
Some of the waste and takeaway packaging, including receipts for a cinema, linked the rubbish discarded to the Carrick-on-Shannon area, nearly 50km away.
One of the members of the Kildallan Group, Ann Conroy described it as “incredible” that someone would travel nearly an hour away to dump rubbish in their community, and said locals were growing increasingly frustrated by the issue.

Frustrating

“This is our second year doing this, and while yes it is a great way of bringing all the members of the community to work together and with each other for the betterment of the local area, it is frustrating to see time and time again the levels of rubbish that is being dumped here and other places,” she told The Anglo-Celt.
“It goes to show that nothing much has changed in those 12-months. We've as much, if not more rubbish than we had last year. The message doesn't seem to be getting through. The mound is just as big. We were hoping after last year, after all the effort that was put in, that lessons would be learned, but as we see there are people willing to travel miles to dispose of their rubbish. It's disappointing to see people have so little respect, not just for our own little community here in Kildallan, but the county and environment as well,” Ms Conroy said.