It’s nearly the Fourth of July. Flags are everywhere. Including at least one place where flags don’t belong.

Rick Rodrigue was recycling some household refuse Wednesday afternoon when he came across the ugly find — American flags, perhaps hundreds of them, scattered across the bottom of a trash bin at the Lewiston Sanitary Landfill.

“Three days before the Fourth and I see that,” the Lewiston man said. “It just isn’t right.”

The flags are of the small, some of them still attached to wooden sticks. The source of those found at the landfill is unknown.

Rodrigue made the discovery shortly before 3 p.m.  when the River Road facility closes. The scene got worse by the second.

“There were flags spilling out of 30-gallon trash bags and there were three or four of those bags in there,” he said. “There were flags scattered across the bottom of the trash bin. There were some on the ground.”

Whoever dumped the flags spilled some between bins so that they settled onto the grimy ground. It’s a scene that most people will recognize as wrong; veterans and civilians, young and old alike.

“Whoever dumped them could have called the American Legion,” Rodrigue said. “They could have called the Boy Scouts. They would have been happy to take the flags.”

Exactly right, said Paul Bernard, chairman of the Lewiston-Auburn Veterans Council.

“Any veterans organization,” he said, “will accept unserviceable flags.”

Bernard himself has kept large quantities himself until it was time to properly dispose of the flags. The time for that disposal is June 14, Flag Day. The proper method is burning.

Hurling bags full of the American flags into a Dumpster, Bernard emphasized, is never right, no matter what the time of year or condition of the flags.

Rodrigue said he spoke with one of the workers there about the flags he spotted in the trash bin. The employee had no idea how they got there.

“He was pretty upset about it, too,” Rodrigue said.

A large quantity of flags on wooden sticks. To Bernard — and Rodrigue, too — that suggests a likely source: a cemetery.

Before Memorial Day each year, hundreds of flags are placed on the graves of war veterans. It’s a state law, after all.

Within two weeks after the holiday, the flags are removed by volunteers, often elderly, Bernard said. If any flags are left behind, most cemetery officials will contact one of the veterans groups to take care of it. Some, however, might not be so attentive to flag disposal etiquette.

Ironically, many flags do make their way to the Lewiston landfill. It happens when burning them at the traditional ceremonies is not possible.

Bernard stressed that in those circumstances, the flags are not dumped into a bin or simply tossed into the incinerator. Workers at the landfill are familiar with the rules of flag handling, Bernard said, and treat the flags with respect.

“They’re very good about it,” he said. “They remove all of the trash from the conveyor belt so the flags go in alone.”

Rodrigue, who made the grim discovery, said his father and grandfather were military men. Even without that connection, he said, the sight of American flags being treated like common rags would have troubled him. It was not a sight he ever expected to see.

“The dump,” he said, “is not the place for our flag.”