The Maggot Punks, unlike well-funded groups like Operation Rescue West, care for their environment and the people in that environment. For that reason every time around Earth Day the Maggot Punks do some activity to support our environment as good little liberal hippies do. This year D-cubed and Merismu along with another Maggot Punk supporter gathered trash near Kellogg and Dugan.

A lot of trash gathered near a culvert where it is no longer permitted to blow throughout the countryside. Here we picked up four bags of trash in less than an hour. The area's trash was made up primarily of styrofoam, empty coffee cups and newspaper advertisements. In addition, we found a discarded tire, part of

a porn mag, aluminum cans, one tennis shoe and remnants of crawfish that lived a polluted existence in the trash tainted water. One passer by displayed his support by telling us to leave the area. Apparently he figured a trashed area was perfectly acceptable or he was another mindless conservative that simply felt like yelling at people who do something positive for the community.

After clearing our desired spot of perhaps 95% of the debris we decided to move on. We went down the abandoned railway to pick up whatever else remained along the track.

Merismu climbed over the old rails to get a look at the other side. With an excited shout she brought our attention to what she saw. Life on the other side of the tracks isn't always better as we witnessed a sea of trash filled garbage bags strewn through the tiny forest.

It was peculiar that every trash bag was the same white, flimsy bag. The articles of trash were consumer goods of empty tissue boxes, pizza cartons, soda cans, even a full bottle of makeup and soy milk. Absent from the debris was home trash like junk mail, tv dinner boxes, cleaning or cooking supplies. This got us to thinking that the trash wasn't a coincidence falling out of the back of

open bed pick up trucks. Rather, we imagined, that it was a nearby business either careless about securing their waste or illegally dumping it to save a few bucks on disposal costs. Given the quick survey of the trash it would appear that the most probable suspect is the Wichita Inn. Much of the trash looked like the sort of trash people temporarily staying at a hotel would gather since refrigerated items were lacking and take out items were more plentiful, kinda like the debris one would expect to see in a dorm room.

By coincidence we ran into a gentleman doing an environmental survey of the area with a clipboard and camera. We were disappointed

that he assessed the trash as being blown street debris like what we were picking up at the culvert. We dismissed that notion because the trash would have to travel through a mass of trees and since all the bags were intact they didn't have to face the hurdle of wind and sharp tree branches. The unclosed bags still had their contents which would be dispersed if blown about by the wind.

There was no possible way that the few of us with our limited number and supplies could have carried out so much waste. Perhaps our local government can remove their focus from giving millions to corporate businesses like Airtran and shutting down locally owned, profitable businesses for a moment to focus on the problem of illegal dumping. Apart from bribes the only thing people like Mayor Carlos Mayans would listen to is intense public pressure. Here's one more thing to give him hell about.

Book of the day: 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know by Russ Kick

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