Cyclists on trail of trash sites

<p>Cyclists once again will be spinning their wheels along Sonoma County back roads looking to rid the scenic trails of trash.</p><p>Volunteers fanned out over several rural roads last fall, mapping illegal dumping sites and then turning the information over to county road crews for pick-up.</p><p>Now, groups are planning another set of rides - called the ABC rides - on April 15 and seeking new ways to keep the chronic trash problem at bay.</p><p>"The stuff got picked up, but there are notorious or chronic sites that are conducive to it, where people have been dumping for years," said Petaluma cyclist Yuri Hauswald.</p><p>In October, volunteers out of Petaluma and Sonoma logged almost 300 miles and marked 200 illegal trash heaps on GPS equipment loaned by the REI store in Santa Rosa. They later learned one particularly smelly garbage bag contained a dog's carcass. Two other large black bags were stuffed with marijuana harvest trimmings.</p><p>Other sites yielded mattresses, tires, an engine block, a sofa and what looked like the contents of an entire kitchen. The refuse was all picked up by Christmas, but in some areas junk is piling up again.</p><p>"The county has 1,400 miles of road. It's pretty tough to keep up with it all," said Ken Giovannetti, who is a manager in the county's road maintenance department.</p><p>He said the county has two full-time employees operating two crew cab pickup trucks. They each take two or three inmates to collect trash in the county.</p><p>The county doesn't have enough resources to do general roadside litter pickup, so it limits its trash pickup to bigger problems and is forced to ignore the lesser litter, Giovannetti said.</p><p>The biggest benefit from the trash rides is the public awareness that comes from it, Giovannetti said.</p><p>Organizers have also asked Supervisor Mike Kerns if he would consider creating a hot line to put on roadside signs so people can report illegal dumpers. They also are proposing surveillance cameras at the worst trash sites.</p><p>Kerns said he'd consider roadside hot line signs, but tracking down people through hidden cameras would prove difficult, expensive and have little value, he said.</p><p>"Most of these areas are in relatively remote areas. I could see some of these cameras getting blown off their tree or wherever they are hidden with a shotgun blast. That could become a very expensive project," he said.</p><p>But he said the public awareness - and mapping out sites the county doesn't have time to find - is proving helpful.</p><p>"I really appreciate what these folks are doing. It's important," Kerns said. "Much of this illegal dumping is really unnecessary. I think there are a lot of opportunities for people to dump at a relatively minimal rate or for free."</p>