Feb 18, 2010
Abington
Trashed in Abington
By Dan Brielmann
Most people zip down Groveland Street in Abington at 40 miles per hour, but when you walk down the street, it's a different story.
Wetlands, streams and woods are interspersed with houses and the old town dump.
As you start to notice the sound of birds in between the noise of rushing vehicles, you will also see the trash—lots of it.
Plastic, aluminum and glass drink containers make up some of the trash.
Then there are beverage containers that aren't covered by the bottle bill so they appear to be worthless—just more trash.
There are some crushed beer and soda cans which can't be redeemed for their deposit value so they are not picked up by the people who make extra money recycling the good ones that can be redeemed.
Some of the bottles are broken and some are very old. One buried Coke bottle looked like it had been tossed there decades ago.
It also becomes quite clear that some of the trash is not as benign, if plastic, aluminum and glass can be called benign.
Tires with rims and lead weights are mired in muck, turning the water a rusty color as they leach into the wetlands.
At one culvert, emptying into a picturesque pool, there was a tire so deeply immersed that it looked as if it had always been there.
Then it hits you as you cross Groveland Street in the area across from the old town dump—there's a scooped out little valley surrounded by briars which will soon be a vernal pool and the natural breeding place for frogs and other local species. It's filled with tires, an old refrigerator, and the hood of a car. That's just what you notice at first glance.
When you look closer there are the ever-present plastic water bottles and drink containers. But most striking is the vintage beer can that has yellowed from years of sitting in the water being bleached by the sun.
Soon that sun will be higher in the sky calling on nature to do its thing.
The vernal pools will fill. The spring peepers will sing their song once again even as they get quieter and quieter each spring until someday when it's totally quiet. At that time, in our imagination we might hear Rachel Carson say, "Don't say you weren't warned.”
The trash may not bother most people, like the ones who don't even notice that it's there while flying by at 40 miles per hour.
Those who try to live there—the species that make our world what it is—they notice the trash and one day we may live in a silent spring because they no longer can live in a world that is trashed.
I believe most people do care.
When we take the time to notice our world, become aware and slow down enough to believe that we can do something about it.
That will be the day after 40 years of Earth Days when we will turn things around.
Brielmann, an Abington resident, is the chairman of the town’s environmental SAGE committee.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/abington/news/lifestyle/columnists/x856605937/ENVIRONMENTALLY-SPEAKING-Trashed-in-Abington
