Lubbock County residents were frustrated with firework debris, beer cans and piles of trash days after the Fourth of July holiday.
“It gets blown into our yard,” Craig Cotton said. “I’ve got a swimming pool in the back that all this trash gets blown into. It is just a major frustration. There’s just tons of stuff that’s left on the side of the road, left in the road, in our ditches.”
Cotton said if residents don’t want to look at the litter, they have to pick it up themselves. So, he spent all morning cleaning up the trash, filling up his entire truck.
“I mean it would be the equivalent of taking stuff I would have thrown in my dumpster and driving into the city limits of Lubbock and dropping it on a random street. Except the only difference is, there are tax dollars that are dedicated to cleaning the streets up in the city. Whereas out where we live, there is no dedicated personnel to do that.”
Neighbors said dumping trash out in the county is a problem year round, but it picks up with the firework debris this time of year. Cotton said they have called the Sheriff’s office, but for now, all of his neighbors help each other out to keep the roads clean.
“So if trash gets blown into my yard or a neighbor’s yard…whether it is my trash or not, we pick it up and we put in in a dumpster. We throw it away because we don’t want it blowing into our neighbor’s yards, and all we are asking of the city of Lubbock and the residents is to show us that same courtesy.”
Cotton has a plea for those planning to shoot off fireworks in the county this summer: be courteous.
“Just pick up your trash. Just be courteous. Just…Be a human. Somebody has to pick that trash up, and it is going to be us out here in the country that has to pick that trash up behind you.”
Littering is against the law in Texas, punishable by a fine of up to $500 for five pounds of trash or less. Anything greater than that is considered illegal dumping, which would carry even steeper fines.
