County Parks and Water Areas Trashed by 4th of July Revelers

The July 4th three-day weekend is over and two days after thousands enjoyed firing bottle rockets and mortars into the air to celebrate, county parks and some county roads are still littered with spent fireworks paper, plastic, and wrappers.

Longtime resident Glenn Carr said he’s never seen it this bad in his life. “I was at Twin Buttes off the Mertzon Highway today and its worse than ever been from fireworks trash. I am not kidding! It looks very dirty and nasty. I am 80-years-old I’ve and never seen it like this now,” Carr said.

At Twin Buttes, someone in charge thought ahead and deployed roll-off dumpsters at several convenient locations. It didn’t appear anyone used them. Although, one of the dumpsters was the scene of a trash fire Friday night. A reader posted the video to our Facebook page.

For the most part, the dumpsters were empty. But spent fireworks were everywhere around the park. Some black trash bags were full or overflowing. Some of the bags were broken open, with debris falling out. For the most part, it appears that when people left Friday night, they took their belongings and expensive stuff, but left the spent fireworks tubes, wrappers, and boxes for someone else to pick up. The closer to the water, the more fireworks trash was strewn around.

Spring Creek Park off FM 2335 near the West Texas Boy’s Ranch was not spared the trash, either. County Commissioner Bill Ford said that he visited Pugh Park in Christoval and handed out trash bags. He wasn’t sure many of them were used after Friday night’s fireworks were shot. Ford said that the commissioners are looking at adding more staff to maintain the county’s parks. The parks have been an issue that Ford has brought to the forefront during his tenure. As the Precinct 4 Commissioner, Ford has much of the surface water, and adjacent recreational areas in the county under his watch. He’s not ruling out asking for help from the jail to re-take the parks from the July 4th litterbugs.

Driving over the equalization channel on Knickerbocker Road towards Dove Creek, more trash and debris from fireworks is seen. Friday night, cars and trucks were lined up on both sides of Knickerbocker for about a half-mile south of the EQ levy. They left their mark.

Inside the city limits, this problem didn't exist. Self-fired fireworks are prohibited inside the city to 5,000 feet (that's almost a mile) from the city limit boundary.