Hot Springs is embroiled in a controversy over the collection of trash, and it?s starting to stink.
Heath White and Jen Ditzler, owners of Huck Finn Rafting Adventures in downtown Hot Springs, say the town is violating environmental laws by leaving a garbage truck full of trash for days at a time, allowing residents to dump whatever they have in its hopper with no supervision. As the trash is compacted, it exudes a messy and smelly liquid, often on the town streets.
?They?re allowing the people of Hot Springs to drive up and put trash into the truck? 24 hours a day, White said. ?Also, they don?t take it to the landfill,? so the trash rots in the truck, attracting flies and rodents.
He said the fluid runoff ? called leachate ? ?flows down into the catch basin and drips on the ground. It creates an environmental hazard and it is creating a health hazard.
With no control over what ends up in the truck, White and Ditzler say there is no way to prove that illegal dumping isn?t occurring, including possibly medical waste, road kill or worse.
Ditzler, an environmental engineer, said ?these activities are illegal according to county, state and federal laws,? and she said the town seems to have been ignoring her warnings about it.
?We were told that the garbage truck had to be left at the unsecured location ? because the town alderman that lives down the street is not able to get his garbage out to the curb on time, so he wants the convenience of having the garbage truck close to his house so he can drive the garbage over in his golf cart,? she wrote in an email to the News-Record & Sentinel.
That seemed to be confirmed at Friday?s alderman meeting, when Alderman Harold Ammons asked Ditzler, ?What do you want me to do with my trash??
The meeting got testy as Ditzler repeated her claim that the town was not only breaking the law but also using the spillage of leachate as a weapon against anyone who complained about it.
White and Ditzler say residents and business owners who complain about the trash issue end up having gallons and gallons of smell garbage fluids dumped in front of their homes or businesses when the operator of the garbage truck compacts the load, which forces the fluid from the truck bin onto the road. On Friday she asked the board if they themselves had been victims of the retribution. ?Have they compacted trash in front of your house??
Ammons responded angrily, asking Ditzler: ?Who the hell are you to tell us what to do??
Ammons also repeatedly asked Ditzler if she lived in the town. ?You don?t live here,? he said. ?We?re not going to let you control this trash situation.?
She replied that she and White, her husband, own their building and expect good service for the taxes they pay.
White said the town collects trash twice a week, and Mayor Sidney Harrison said when asked that he thought the town took the trash to the county waste management facility near Marshall ?once or twice a week.?
But a check of the records at the waste facility off Little Pine Road show that the town of Hot Springs has waited as long as a month in the last year to empty the truck. As of Friday, Sept. 17, the waste facility had recorded only one trip by Hot Springs to empty their truck, on Sept. 7. Before that the truck was emptied on August 27, which means the trash sat in the truck for 10 days in downtown Hot Springs as temperatures reached the low and mid 80s.
Trips to the waste facility occurred only twice a month five different times this year, records show.
The truck is often parked within 200 feet of the Appalachian Trail, which runs through downtown Hot Springs, and White said he has heard rafting clients and others complain about the smell.
White also said he fears retribution for trying to get the town to follow the law. ?If you go into a meeting and speak out, they exact their punishment. The repercussions (from calling the media) are going to be so severe on me,? he predicted. He went so far as to predict that the town would block the back entrance to his rafting business. ?I?ve been warned by one of the town employees that they?re going to block off? access to the back of his building, he said.
On Friday that seemed to come true when someone parked a piece of earth moving equipment at the back door of White?s building. The town owns the land where the vehicle was parked, but White said the town has always allowed him to use the back door to load canoes and kayaks for his white water trips.
White said a wheel had been removed from the loader so it couldn?t be moved. A town employee told WLOS-TV that ?the tire came off the wheel? and that White was not being targeted for retribution.
Mayor Harrison said he has seen no paperwork to order repair parts for the vehicle, and said that while the tractor was moved late Friday or early Saturday, ?there was another sitting in its place Saturday morning. Harrison said it is likely that town workers are targeting White for retribution, and that ?the aldermen are going to address? the issue.
Harrison said he does think the town is violating environmental law, and that he is expecting a report from Andrea Keller of the state Department of Environmental and Natural Resources. ?She was working on it Friday evening,? he said.
Keller told the News-Record & Sentinel that possible violations include violation of rules specifying that ?garbage shall be stored in either durable rust resistant, non-absorbent, water-tight, rodent proof, and easily cleanable containers with a close fitting fly-tight cover? and that trash trucks or receptacles ?shall be cleaned as often as necessary to prevent a nuisance or insect breeding and shall be maintained in good repair.?
It was obvious last week that the garbage truck had not been cleaned, as maggots were plentiful in the hopper.
On Friday, residents could be seen pulling up to the truck and dumping trash into it.
By the end of Friday?s alderman meeting, there seemed to be some agreement that the situation with the trash truck must be resolved. Awaiting the state report, Harrison and others said the town will follow whatever DENR requires. ?We?ll get her report, and then we?ll know where we?re standing. We need to be in compliance, that?s for sure. And we want to keep things calm, if we can.?
By Jonathan D. Austin 
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