When clunkers turn to junkers as they hunker by the highway, how long will they sit there?
Too long, says Dan Boldt, who daily eyes two abandoned trucks as he travels from his Elwha River Road home to his job in Port Angeles.
“They’ve been out there since last Thursday,” Boldt said Wednesday,
“They’re just all busted up and have a bunch of garbage in them. They just sit there and sit there and sit there.
“Last year a car, a wreck, sat there for almost a month.”
Not far away, alongside a private road just yards from the Elwha River, an engine-less, windowless, burned-out corpse of a car looks like it’s settling into the earth.
Boldt said such abandoned vehicles show up in his neighborhood in unincorporated Clallam County every two months or so. It’s not unusual for owners to strip them of parts, smash out their windows and set them afire.
Old appliances dumped
It’s also common, he said, to find old appliances in out-of-the-way places.
“It’s terrible that someone will take a truckload of garbage and just dump it,” Boldt said.
The Port Angeles city landfill will accept appliances, scrap metal and tires for recycling.
Charges for city and county residents alike are $80.65 per ton with a minimum charge of $7.50, which covers the first 80 pounds.
The landfill is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It is closed Sundays and the nine state-observed holidays.
It will continue to recycle appliances and tires after it closes in October 2006 and becomes a transfer station.
It won’t, however, accept junked autos because the landfill is not a state-licensed wrecking yard.
Someone left a car outside the landfill gate Saturday night and police had to have it towed away, said Ken Loghry, city solid waste supervisor.
