Baxter Considering Banning Dumping in City Sewers

Baxter’s Aldermen and Mayor will consider creating an ordinance that would ban dumping in the city’s sewer system.

Mayor John Martin said during Thursday’s meeting the idea came about after large amounts of grease was discovered at the city’s sewer plant.

“I don’t think the city of Cookeville allows it. The problem we’ve got here is it’s not good for our system,” Martin said. “What you get out of it, there’s more detriment than what you’ll ever gain.”

Martin said although septic tanks haven’t normally been an issue for the sewer system, the ordinance would include them under the ban as a precaution.

“It’s not that bad if it’s just septic tanks,” Martin said. “But everything that hit our system the other day was all grease. We just can’t do it, and it’s a problem [where] if you allow it, we never know what they’re out there dumping.”

City Code Director Bob Lane said there could be an issue in trying to prevent people from dumping waste into the sewer.

“The problem with that is if you get a violator that’s doing something, and I understand where you’re going,” Lane said, “we don’t have something we can go to and say we know it’s coming from your place.”

Lane and Martin agreed that adding a citation and potentially taking violators to court would help prevent similar incidents from happening again.

“We can put some teeth in this once we write this ordinance,” Martin said. “We can put enough fine on it [and] if they’re caught, they won’t want to dump again.”

The aldermen voted unanimously to pursue creating an ordinance.