SWAMP GAS

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

I also felt a surge of pity for the neighbors as I passed them on the way home—sitting on porches, cutting grass, washing their Dodges. Did they know swamp gas had just been snatched away from them, replaced by substances that would slowly seep into their pancreases, the marrow of their bones, the genes of their children?

In the weeks since, I have been told by officials of the New York State Environmental Conservation Department that not only have the stakes of dumping been rising, but the strategies of the garbage entrepreneurs have become elaborate, even exquisite. As a rule, landowners are being offered more and more money. But exceptions are increasing: With demand for space becoming greater every day, some entrepreneurs are dispensing with a deal altogether. Instances now crop up in which an owner, arriving home from vacation, for example, discovers his back 40 covered with heaps of rubble. All he can do is stew, since the entrepreneur has left no calling card and since removing all that rubble would drive him straight into bankruptcy.

Brazen? Think about this even newer wrinkle: truck hijacking. Many truckers live in rural areas and typically park their rigs near their homes between runs. Lately, however, a number of trucks have started disappearing in the dead of night, to all appearances stolen. Frantic calls to the police and the insurance companies follow. Then it happens, usually a call from the police a few days later. " We have your semi. Found it parked over on Elm Street. " The owner, of course, discovers that the trailer is crammed to the rafters with waste. Now it's his problem.

I never thought, when I became a teenager and hated all kids younger than I, that I would ever again find myself witnessing the game called Hot Potato. I was obviously wrong. It's played all the time around here. I may even be playing it myself by continuing to suppose that my yellow brick house is out of this world.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print