Anglers’ Litter Infuriates Me

A great fishing spot, trashed

Charleston
19 July 2010
By John McCoy

This week’s column is more like a rant. It follows up on a recent blog post about litter at West Virginia’s Marmet Locks and Dam:

I went to one of the Kanawha Valley’s favorite fishing spots to get photos of people fishing.

I ended up taking photos of garbage.

The people were missing, driven off by bright sunshine, high humidity and 95-degree afternoon heat. I stood at the head of the stairways that led down to the Marmet Locks fishing pier, camera in hand, wondering if there might be fishermen on the banks downstream. To find out, I walked down the metal staircase to the fishing pier.

The farther I walked, the madder I got.

Trash littered the fishing pier from one end to the other. I stepped over Styrofoam worm tubs, balls of discarded fishing line, empty lure packages, plastic chicken-liver containers, pop cans, fast-food wrappers and chunks of broken-up Styrofoam coolers.

Plastic grocery bags filled with even more debris hung from the catwalk’s metal handrail. At least two trash bags, each stuffed with rubbish, lay on the cross-piers that supported the walkway.

The sight infuriated me so much I decided to share it with you. I started snapping photos. At the same time, I started putting together a mental outline for a column to accompany the images. This column.

At first I planned to call for the temporary closure of all Kanawha and Ohio River piers. “Let those litterbugs do without for a while, and maybe they’ll appreciate what a precious resource these fishing piers really are,” I thought. “Maybe then they’ll take clean up after themselves.”

I quickly realized, however, that such a draconian approach wouldn’t work.

For one thing, it’s not at all clear who would have the authority to order a closure. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls some of the facilities. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission controls others. The Division of Natural Resources has agreements with both entities to allow public access to the piers.

A call to Bret Preston, the DNR’s head of warm-water fisheries, revealed yet another complicating factor. Cleanup responsibilities don’t necessarily rest with the DNR, FERC or the Corps of Engineers. In some instances, a social service agency hires developmentally disabled people to clean up the piers. In Marmet’s case, the town government handles the cleanup.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why in the heck aren’t those entities doing a better job of keeping the place clean?”

My response: They shouldn’t have to. If anglers were being responsible, there wouldn’t be any trash to clean up.

“If you can carry it in, you should carry it back out,” a Boy Scout leader told me years ago.

Clearly that’s not happening at Marmet. Fishermen able-bodied enough to descend and climb the steep steps to the piers apparently don’t consider themselves able-bodied enough to carry out empty chicken-liver containers, even though they carried them in full.

Perhaps the summertime heat is making wimps of them. Maybe all that casting tires them out. Possibly — just possibly — the excitement of landing a 12-inch white bass turns their arms and legs to jelly. Or maybe they just don’t give a damn.

I vote for that last one.