COUNTY SAYS HEALTH RISKS NECESSITATE ORDINANCE

A dilapidated mobile home sits abandoned along County Road 657 just north of Cape Girardeau, its front door wide open. The back yard is littered with trash, an eyesore for neighboring homeowners.

A burned out, brick apartment building blights County Road 635, not far from homes that have turned one-time farm land into residential outposts. The front yard is littered with the burned wreckage of a car and a discarded refrigerator with the door still on it.

"This place has never been cleaned up either," said Nancy Foor, eyeing the unsightly mess. It has been that way for a couple of years now, she said.

An environmental health specialist with the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center, Foor investigates complaints about litter, junk cars and abandoned buildings.

In rural Cape Girardeau County, trash is dumped in sinkholes and along roads, ditches and creek banks. Foor said deteriorating buildings, junk cars and piles of garbage can attract snakes, rats and insects that spread infectious diseases. Tires provide good breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Crumbling buildings also pose a safety problem, particularly for children who might be playing in an area.

Foor says she and her public health co-workers can do little about it.

New law studied

She hopes that will change. The Cape Girardeau County Commission soon may enact a nuisance abatement law for the rural, unincorporated areas of the county. Commissioners currently are studying the idea. Commissioners say they want a common-sense law that would be enforced on a complaint basis and doesn't pit neighbor against neighbor.

Foor thinks some type of nuisance law could help. "You need some type of base-line regulations," she said.

With a law, the county could prosecute violators and, if necessary, tax bill property owners for the clean up work.

But she says such a law won't eliminate all the eyesores. County commissioners say they want a law that would address only public health threats or safety problems.

County health officials say the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the state's health department get involved only in cases involving serious health and environmental problems. Such cases are few.

The DNR's office in Poplar Bluff, Mo., has a single investigator to handle the 700 to 800 complaints it receives annually in a 24-county area of Southeast Missouri. About half of those complaints involve trash and other litter, said Gary Gaines, DNR's regional director.

Finding the property owner isn't always easy. Then the agency must prove the case involves an environmental threat.

"It is a very hard thing to prove that a pile of old tires or trash or junk cars out there is an environmental threat," Gaines said.

He said discarded appliances, abandoned vehicles and piles of trash are common in rural areas. "People take it for granted," he said.

But as a county's population grows and more residential developments took root in rural areas, nuisance complaints rise.

Live and let live

Not everybody eagerly anticipates a nuisance law. Doug Flannery lives in rural Cape Girardeau County near Whitewater, Mo. He admits some areas are unsightly but believes most rural residents take a live-and-let-live philosophy toward it.

"I don't sweep my neighbor's doorstep and he doesn't sweep mine," said Flannery, who last year helped direct a successful campaign to defeat a measure to implement county planning and zoning.

The county commission plans to hold a public hearing before implementing any nuisance law. Flannery said he hopes it is held at night when more of the county's residents could attend.

Even when there is a clear nuisance, it can be hard to address.

Property owned by Harold and Verna Gloth on County Road 255 southwest of Whitewater, Mo., has long been a dump site. It's full of old refrigerators, discarded stoves and other trash.

Gloth said she and her husband have complained to county officials. The county has installed "no dumping" signs, but they have proved ineffective.

People still dump their trash there. "It's a junk hole," said Gloth.