OXFORD – The clouds didn’t bother Rickie Jack who was taking his daughter Victoria fishing.

The Oxford police sergeant and his 8-year-old were going to spend some quality time together. When they left the brook on Whittemore Road, Victoria had caught a brook trout and Jack bagged two litterers.

It’s hard to say who was happier.

Jack does not like those who litter.

He noticed a truck bouncing up and down on a side road near the stream and saw two men dumping brush into a hole on the side.

“When they pulled out I gave them a wave,” Jack said. “They looked at me kind of funny and left.”

He took their license plate number and issued a summons two days later.

He said the incidences of people dumping trash have been increasing this year and police won’t tolerate it.

In the past week Lt. Jon Tibbetts and Sgt. Theron Bickford have issued summonses for illegal dumping. They have found trash on the Yeaton Swamp Road and the East Oxford Road.

Jack said he’s going to issue another one soon because he found bags of trash, tin cans and an electrical fan on the Number Six Road.

“I found photos and the name of the girl in the trash,” Jack said. “So she’s going to have to explain to me how her stuff ended up in Oxford when she lives in Norway.

What people need to realize is that they are hurting themselves,” he said. “The landowner will end up posting the land and those who like to fish and hunt will no longer be able to. The owner blames everyone. It only takes one person to ruin it for everybody.”

Ed Knightly, owner of Ed-Os Variety Store on King street, thinks the policy passed by selectmen that sets a $10 dump fee for a pickup of brush might be an impetus for the increase in illegal dumping.

A petition is posted in his store and at Polly’s Variety Store on Route 121 asking selectmen to rescind their decision.

The petition says: “We the undersigned, consisting of taxpayers and residents from the town of Oxford, request that the selectmen reconsider their decision to apply the rate fees set by the solid waste committee.”

Bickford acknowledged that the fee might cause some to dump illegally, despite the heavy fines they face for dumping.

He said the fine for illegal dumping can run from $100 to $500 and if the dumpers do not pick up what they left the town will add that total to the ticketed amount.

Bickford said the cost can be considerable for an hour or two of a town employee’s time plus the cost of the vehicle to haul the trash away.

Town Manager Michael Huston and selectmen expressed their disapproval of the increase in illegal dumping at a special selectman’s meeting Thursday night. Selectmen decided the issue would be on the agenda for the next meeting, so they could discuss a course of action.

Jack said he thinks some people are just lazy. He said they could get a burning permit for brush and take care of it in that manner, if they did not want to pay a dumping fee.

He said some people just don’t want to sort out recyclables. One of the bags of trash he found on Number Six Road was filled with tin cans that could have been recycled at the Norway transfer station.

In the meantime, police are tiring over the increasing number of dumping complaints that Jack said are coming in weekly.

“There can’t be any tolerance, because it will only get worse,” Jack said. “Besides that, do we want the state of Maine to look like a dump? It’s shameful and disgusting.

“We’re going to crack down big time,” Jack said. “We’re going to find out who has been dumping one way or the other and we will prosecute,” he said.

jsmedley@sunjournal.com

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