Garbage situation going to be a mess

Veteran journalists, along with observers of city and county politics, all know that much of the business conducted by elected boards for the people of said cities and counties, is generally boring.
Routine matters of maintenance and planning and most other business the boards attend to is simply not interesting. There are, however, a few hot-button issues that can always be counted on to stir up the masses.
Water and sewer service is one. Salaries and compensation is another. And let’s not forget trash and garbage collection and associated fees for pick-up.
So it’s easy to predict that Panola County’s Board of Supervisors are about to take on a challenge that will likely get messy. Real messy.
Supervisors have been talking about the matter of household garbage collection for several months, specifically about the problem of having trucks under contract with the county running routes on private roads.
It seems the supervisors have put the matter off about as long as possible, and now must address the situation. Jennifer Jackson, who oversees the solid waste collection for the county, has been driving Panola roads and making lists of areas that will no longer be eligible to have individual garbage containers, and regularly scheduled house-to-house pickup.
She gave the supervisors a long list of private roads at their Monday meeting. The bulk of the list was made up of about 35 roads that make up the Enid Shores areas of the county. Residents in that area will soon lose their garbage pick-up at their houses.
Instead, the county is proposing to place a large 30-yard roll-off type dumpster at the water tower that serves the area. Residents will ostensibly carry their own trash to the dumpster which will be picked up and replaced on a regular schedule.
The logistics of that proposed solution has lots of potential for snags, the most obvious being a host of dissatisfied residents. The people of that area already have short fuses with the supervisors because of the conditions of their roads, which the county isn’t really supposed to be assisting with upkeep anyway.
Besides Enid Shores, there is the Ramsey Circle trailer park on Hwy. 51 North. The county hopes to collect those cans from residents and place an eight-yard dumpster there for customers to use. The plan calls for that dumpster to be emptied twice a week.
And let’s not forget the other 75 or so private roads (many of them not more that long driveways) scattered around the county.
Residents of those roads will also have to take their cans to the nearest public road each week for pick-up.
This has the potential to be a big, stinky mess. Stay tuned.