The junk on the side of the roads in Ector County is a common sight. There is everything from mattresses, tires, abandoned cars, and mobile homes.
On public and private properties, people are leaving behind their trash, drugs, and even sewage.
It is a mess, that goes beyond public dumping.
Well, good news. The Ector County Environmental Enforcement team is cracking down and cleaning up the messes.
They are cleaning up and citing more people for leaving junk in the county.
“The laws that we try to enforce out here is what we call a public nuisance, that’s if anybody tries to leave their property in an unsanitary condition,” Rickey George, Environmental Enforcement Team and Emergency Coordinator said.
And there are quite a few unsanitary sites, like sewage all over properties.
“The trash will attract mice, rats, insects," George said. "Rattlesnakes like to eat those."
George believes the sites are a public health issue.
"Mosquitoes carry diseases, no one wants to be bit by a snake," George said."I mean it’s not so much that it looks bad, it’s a public health issue.”
The county recently added more two new full time and two part-time officers to the environmental enforcement team.
“People in these areas that do maintain their property they want their home value to stay up and their health to stay up," George said. "The county is listening to its constituents who are tired of this being right next door to them.”
Property owners can face two different charges: illegal dumping and a public nuisance.
The county does allow the owners to not get a citation if they clean up within the timeframe they assign.
The owner of this property, George, showed NewsWest 9 he did not even know a few dozen people were living on it.
And now he is stuck with the bill to clean it up.
Ector County tells us they issue about 10 to 20 citations a week.
They are covering about 900 square miles and are about 40 cases behind.