We have had several news stories and columns in The Post recently that explain many of the details regarding the County Commission's attempts to enforce mandatory garbage pickup.

Shane Givens, a local attorney who writes a weekly column titled “Legal Ease,” first approached us with the idea for an article explaining the details about the garbage pickup debate because he knew from attending a recent Commission meeting that there would be lots of questions. As a result, parts I and II ran in the Nov. 21 and Nov. 28 issues, respectively.

Separately, Probate Judge Melvyn Salter (who also chairs the County Commission) suggested a story that also turned into a two-parter because of the need to explain the history of the issue.

Despite all that information, by 6 p.m. on Nov. 29 the Facebook comment section associated with one garbage-related article quickly filled with remarks which imply there is still a lot of misunderstanding about mandatory garbage pickup. One friend wrote, “I have a few businesses and I would love for the politicians to force people to buy my products. How can I, like the example here, make this happen?”

Perhaps that question was meant to be sarcastic, but it actually has a simple answer: Sell a product (automobile insurance, for instance) that state legislators believe is of sufficient importance to the public's general health and overall safety that everyone should be required to purchase it.

I believe we can all agree that, as a general rule, people listen when their doctor speaks. In this instance, it was actually an entire group of doctors that first spoke up about garbage and its ill effects on public health. As our front page story on Nov. 28 explained, a board made up of local physicians was first to recommend mandatory garbage pickup, in 1990. A year later the state environmental agency urged the county to follow through on the doctors' suggestion. Finally, in 1992, commissioners passed a resolution mandating countywide garbage pickup.

Another friend asked, “As long as people are properly disposing of the waste I don't understand how this can be forced? Can anybody explain?”

Givens did so in his Nov. 28 column. As he wrote, anyone who already has a method for garbage removal can request a “certificate of exception.” That permit costs $10 a year and must be approved annually by the Commission. It allows the holder to continue with his current means of disposal. Thus, no one with a viable, approved alternative is “forced” into paying for mandatory pickup.
Another commenter lamented that pickup is “another way to make working poor people poorer.”

Actually, if you ask anyone in real estate, tourism, or industrial development in Cherokee County they will tell you that one of the first questions businessmen – including the group that built KTH Leesburg Products and the men who developed the lakeside resort at Chesnut Bay – ask before deciding to move to an area is about cleanliness.

Because these developers (and hopefully others in the years ahead) knew there was at least an ordinance in place for dealing with an ongoing trash problem, they were willing to construct their businesses and bring their millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs to Cherokee County. Ultimately, their presence makes more people want to come here to fish, stay the weekend, and spend their hard-earned money. Since this county is a tourist community at heart, we all get a little richer (not poorer) as a result of efforts to clean up. To think otherwise borders on being obtuse.

Does government do the wrong thing sometimes? Absolutely, no argument there. But not this time. And it seems anyone who isn't part of the county's garbage problem ought to pat our current commissioners on the backs for taking on 20 years of apathy by their predecessors and showing the courage to try and do the right thing when it comes to enforcing the law on mandatory garbage pickup.