Calcasieu officials have been cracking down on littering. But what residents found dumped in one rural neighborhood really seems to take the cake. It's bad enough when people toss trash out a car window or dump an old sofa.
But residents near Westlake couldn't believe someone deposited the carcass of a big, old boar hog on the side of the road.
It looks bad and smells worse where the carcass was dumped off John Stine Road near Westlake. Though it was quite a hit with the many buzzards whose feast we interrupted upon arrival. Ann and John L. Fontenot find it sad that some have so little regard for others.
Said John, "When we first pulled up there must've been at least 100 plus buzzards. Ann Fontenot: This is where we live and we wouldn't go to their house in Lake Charles and throw a dead dog or a dead animal. We have dead dogs and dead animals thrown in the ditch all the time here."
Besides the boar, someone also dumped a bunch of crawfish heads which caused a horrible odor in the hot sun. John complained, "It's not in their back yard. They don't have to smell it."
Calcasieu Police Jury Spokesman Jason Barnes says there's really no excuse because the parish provides places to dispose of such stuff. "It's a major, major issue. We have a littering problem here in Calcasieu Parish. We're not just talking about trash, we're talking about bio medical hazards. It's a hazardous waste situation that could become a problem when it gets into the ditches."
John Fontenot is concerned too. "No tellin' what kind of diseases could be caught off the bacteria off these hogs. Hogs cause a lot of diseases."
And trash in ditches can hurt drainage, which Ann pointed out."We don't have city drainage like the people"e who live in town. We depend on our ditches."
And such dumping is illegal and can result in fines. Said Barnes, "We want to make sure that the public knows that you can go to our new convenience centers that we have on both sides of the parish and you can bring an animal carcass, crawfish shells, whatever, as long as it is double bagged, you can bring it there."
Later parish crews came and picked up the dead animal and crawfish. They hauled it away to be disposed of properly.
The Calcasieu Police Jury has established Solid Waste Convenience Centers on each side of the river. There's one on Post Oak Road in Sulphur and on the east side go to Swift Plant Road.
The centers are funded with tax dollars and are open from 7 a.m. To 5 p.m. Thursday through Monday of each week. They are closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
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