Lamar County officials can no longer provide “waste dirt” to residents as fill material, according to a State Attorney General’s opinion last week.
Road Manager Tommy Jones told the Board of Supervisors about the ruling during last Thursday’s meeting at the William J. “Pete” Gamble III Chancery Courthouse in Purvis. Jones said the opinion originated from a dispute in Wayne County.
“Wayne County is a beat county, and a contractor got mad because the county was hauling what we consider waste dirt,” he said. “They filed a federal lawsuit. I was asked to call the State Auditor (Stacey Pickering) and see where we stand. I made that call and I got back an Attorney General’s opinion. What the auditor said is what we have been doing is illegal from every standpoint.”
Waste dirt is created from the dirt that is removed while digging out ditches or installing pipes along roadways.
“As far as our waste dirt, what we are going to have to do now if we’re out ditching or doing shoulder work, we can give that material to an adjacent landowner,” he said. “But we cannot take it, stockpile it and haul it out at a later date to somebody who’s asking for it. That’s where the legal aspect comes in.”
County Administrator Joseph “Jody” Waits said Pickering is talking about the efficient disposal of the dirt.
“If you’re digging a ditch and there’s a place right next to it where you can get rid of it, then it saves the county money,” he said. “You don’t have to haul it and dump it. Where it comes into play is when we go to store it and move it again; that’s when it goes outside the boundaries of the law. To dump on somebody’s property is fine; to spread it never would have been fine.”
Jones said Pickering’s explanation was clear.
“Whenever we pick it up and take it to the yard, we’re spending money at that point,” he said. “Whenever we put it in the yard, pick it up and load it up and take it somebody else, we’re spending money on fuel, equipment and manpower. Then we’re doing that for the benefit of a private citizen. It’s not for the county’s benefit, and the way the law is written, it has to be for the county’s benefit.”
District 5 Supervisor Dale Lucus said the practice has been used for a long time.
“If we cut a hill down and nobody needs the dirt, we have to haul it to out,” he said. “We start getting a mound of dirt, and then somebody needs some to fill out a washed-out place. We just got it off the mound. It was providing a service to them, and it was providing a service to us too. It’s always been done.”
Jones said the county has received numerous requests for the waste dirt.
“We actually have a list of people who want dirt,” he said. “We have people who call in every day saying, ‘I want waste dirt. I have some excess topsoil.’”
Jones said not hauling the waste dirt out to residents will help the road crews.
“This is going to give us a lot more time on the job,” he said. “You’d be surprised how much time we spend with people who want that waste dirt.”
"We are probably going to end up with mountains of materials that we can’t do anything with and we are going to have to find another way to dispose of it. There’s always going to be somewhere you can put it; there are going to be washouts, culverts that blow out or places where you can put it.
"Once it got that opinion from the Attorney General (last week), we will no longer deliver any waste dirt anywhere in the county unless we are working right there in that area. If you are there and you need it, we can give it to you right there. Outside of that, that’s going to be the law."
