Regarding illegal dumping of fill on agricultural land (The Leader, July 10) where the farmer/owner is being paid by the trucker to dump the load.
An appropriate solution would be, whenever illegal fill (which should not be difficult to identify) is spotted on farmland, it would be recorded by the Agricultural Land Commission. The owner of the agricultural land would be fined an appropriate amount (say $500-700) by the municipality for accepting illegal material on agricultural land.
Also, the money paid by the trucker to the farmer would be confiscated.
This fine to the farmer could be decreased significantly (say to $200-300) if the farmer/owner identified the trucker who dumped the load.
If the trucker was identified by the farmer/owner, the trucker would also be fined (say $2,000-3,000) for illegal dumping. Both fines would act as a strong deterrent to such dumping.
The fines to the trucker could also be ranked depending on the amount of fill dumped and or the toxicity or other deleterious characteristics of the load that was dumped, and increased up to $10,000-20,000 for strongly deleterious material.
An additional cost to the trucker would be for the removal of the dumped material from the agricultural land to an appropriate legal dumping site.
Citizens who act as watchdogs to point out illegally dumped material to the authorities could be rewarded for their positive civic action.
These fines to farmer and trucker should greatly increase the risk of both being caught and diminish the profitability of such dumping activity, and preserve our agricultural land for agricultural purposes.
Now if we could just get rid of the law that allows huge volumes of fill material to be dumped on smaller and smaller tracts of agricultural land as a base for monster houses.
John Payne
