While on our Skunk Cabbage outing we discovered a secret area on the SE portion of campus that we were probably not supposed to find. It seems that the Buildings and Grounds has been dumping refuse in the woodland over in that area. I was not uncommon in the past for people to have a "personal" dump to dispose and later bury wastes. This is typically not any big problem if the fill area is appropriate and the materials being dumped would not pose any hazard to wildlife or people. For a good part of the dump we visited, the materials consisted of tree branches (degradable), or innocuous metal materials (tin) that, when buried, will pose no problems. However, we were concerned by two things. First, among the things dumped were containers obviously having contained chemicals (looked like lawn care and swimming pool chemicals) and non-degradable items (plastic). Second, the dump seems to be expanding, and the choices of locations do not lend themselves to ease of burial. To accomplish this they are bulldozing trees and dirt over the rubble. Further, the whole thing is rather unsightly!

To address this issue, the "set aside the skunk cabbage wetland" project group decided that they should take on the additional task of trying to address this dumping issue. We briefly discussed possible approaches, and after a discussion with the other members of the group, we should all discuss this in class.