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Record purge misses mark
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NEWS-TIMES
BY SHANNON KEMP
SALTER PATH — It seems there was an unforeseen problem disposing Indian Beach’s nearly 30 years of general town records when some of those papers ended up littering the shoreline at Homer Smith Point.
A town hall housecleaning effort went a bit array when it was discovered Thursday some of the records officials thought were being burned in a backyard burn pit along Bogue Sound near Homer Smith Seafood weren’t destroyed.
Instead, documents were found Thursday along the sand, shells and marsh grass, alarming a resident who called County Commissioner Wade Nelms to investigate what was happening in the unincorporated community.
He found check stubs, dry cleaning receipts and people’s pay rolls that had not been destroyed in the failed burning effort that littered the shoreline, and he called the press.
“This is not right,” he said Thursday afternoon. “There are certainly litter laws in violation.”
Commissioner Nelms said the incident “begs some serious questions. Why was it being burned there and not disposed of properly?”
Paper records for the town hadn’t been cleaned out since the 1970s and the town was in need of some room, according to Indian Beach Town Clerk Beverly Bigley, who was contacted after The News-Times visited the shoreline.
Following the disposal guidelines from the state’s Records Retention and Disposal Schedule for county and municipal government records, the town decided to dispose of records dated as far back as 1973, when the town was formed, up until 2000.
“We had so much of it so we were trying to think of the best way to get rid of a large amount of records,” Ms. Bigley said.
“We had about five or six tall kitchen trash bags full. We had documents from 1973 when the town was incorporated,” she said adding that shredding them all was out of the question and burning the documents seemed the best option.
“It was just general information the town was getting rid of,” town employee Ronda Lambert said, adding that the town was making room for more space. “They’d never thrown anything out … and it was time to get things organized.”
Mrs. Lambert also said burning was one of the proper ways to dispose of municipal documents and that some documents don’t even have requirements to be shredded. But the town just wanted to take precautions, she said.
Ms. Bigley said the town entrusted the Salter Path Fire Department with the burning duty and firefighter Chris Lewis was left in charge of the process because he had a burn pit in the back of his yard, Ms. Bigley said.
When asked about the disposal Thursday afternoon, Ms. Bigley said she would call the fire chief and get Mr. Lewis to clean up the mess “within the next five minutes.”
“I have no idea that any wrong was done ... maybe the fire wasn’t monitored as long as it should have been, that’s the only thing I can think of … but certainly we did not mean to cause the shoreline to be littered. We wouldn’t intentionally do that, that’s for sure,” Ms. Bigley said.
Indian Beach-Salter Path Fire Chief Donald Melby said this problem was unforeseen when the department was asked to burn the documents about three weeks ago.
He said Mr. Lewis had a fire pit behind his home and was able to throw the documents in the pit with leaves and debris he would burn when the wind was right, adding that the documents were not important or secured documents and no Social Security numbers were on anything.
“While he was burning leaves and limbs, we thought that everything was consumed,” he said.
He said a high tide “took some of the paper that had not been fully consumed.”
“We had already been up there to pick up and clean up everything, anything that was part of our documents,” Chief Melby said Thursday.
“We hate that it happened but it was really unforeseen.”
Mrs. Bigley said because of computers, towns don’t have to keep paper records as long as they once had to.
“The things we destroyed you only have to keep three previous years … used to you had to keep things a lot longer,” she said.
A town hall housecleaning effort went a bit array when it was discovered Thursday some of the records officials thought were being burned in a backyard burn pit along Bogue Sound near Homer Smith Seafood weren’t destroyed.
Instead, documents were found Thursday along the sand, shells and marsh grass, alarming a resident who called County Commissioner Wade Nelms to investigate what was happening in the unincorporated community.
He found check stubs, dry cleaning receipts and people’s pay rolls that had not been destroyed in the failed burning effort that littered the shoreline, and he called the press.
“This is not right,” he said Thursday afternoon. “There are certainly litter laws in violation.”
Commissioner Nelms said the incident “begs some serious questions. Why was it being burned there and not disposed of properly?”
Paper records for the town hadn’t been cleaned out since the 1970s and the town was in need of some room, according to Indian Beach Town Clerk Beverly Bigley, who was contacted after The News-Times visited the shoreline.
Following the disposal guidelines from the state’s Records Retention and Disposal Schedule for county and municipal government records, the town decided to dispose of records dated as far back as 1973, when the town was formed, up until 2000.
“We had so much of it so we were trying to think of the best way to get rid of a large amount of records,” Ms. Bigley said.
“We had about five or six tall kitchen trash bags full. We had documents from 1973 when the town was incorporated,” she said adding that shredding them all was out of the question and burning the documents seemed the best option.
“It was just general information the town was getting rid of,” town employee Ronda Lambert said, adding that the town was making room for more space. “They’d never thrown anything out … and it was time to get things organized.”
Mrs. Lambert also said burning was one of the proper ways to dispose of municipal documents and that some documents don’t even have requirements to be shredded. But the town just wanted to take precautions, she said.
Ms. Bigley said the town entrusted the Salter Path Fire Department with the burning duty and firefighter Chris Lewis was left in charge of the process because he had a burn pit in the back of his yard, Ms. Bigley said.
When asked about the disposal Thursday afternoon, Ms. Bigley said she would call the fire chief and get Mr. Lewis to clean up the mess “within the next five minutes.”
“I have no idea that any wrong was done ... maybe the fire wasn’t monitored as long as it should have been, that’s the only thing I can think of … but certainly we did not mean to cause the shoreline to be littered. We wouldn’t intentionally do that, that’s for sure,” Ms. Bigley said.
Indian Beach-Salter Path Fire Chief Donald Melby said this problem was unforeseen when the department was asked to burn the documents about three weeks ago.
He said Mr. Lewis had a fire pit behind his home and was able to throw the documents in the pit with leaves and debris he would burn when the wind was right, adding that the documents were not important or secured documents and no Social Security numbers were on anything.
“While he was burning leaves and limbs, we thought that everything was consumed,” he said.
He said a high tide “took some of the paper that had not been fully consumed.”
“We had already been up there to pick up and clean up everything, anything that was part of our documents,” Chief Melby said Thursday.
“We hate that it happened but it was really unforeseen.”
Mrs. Bigley said because of computers, towns don’t have to keep paper records as long as they once had to.
“The things we destroyed you only have to keep three previous years … used to you had to keep things a lot longer,” she said.
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The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of carolinacoastonline.com.
pather wrote on Aug 1, 2008 7:07 PM:
" for everybody's imformation this burn pit was on the sound side of the bulkhead not in the back yard. i thought we had laws that stopped people from destroying our marshes , thats the reason it 'washed up' behind a fishhouse. and it was a firedept that done this and they should know better "
lookoutkeeper wrote on Aug 4, 2008 9:30 AM:
" There is, unfortunately, no state laws that prevent someone from placing a couple of 55-gallon drums in the marsh to burn trash. CAMA regs only regulate "development activities" within a narrow stretch close to the water. The burning of trash, unless directly tied to construction on a lot, isn't considered "development."
There are laws that prevent tearing up a marsh without a permit with wheeled or tracked vehicles. But walking the trash to the drums wouldn't be a violation.
This case does seem to violate the state's litter law, regardless of whether it was intentional or not:
http://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_14/GS_14-399.html.
It also seems to violate the county's open burning ban:
http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=12411&sid=33 "
There are laws that prevent tearing up a marsh without a permit with wheeled or tracked vehicles. But walking the trash to the drums wouldn't be a violation.
This case does seem to violate the state's litter law, regardless of whether it was intentional or not:
http://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_14/GS_14-399.html.
It also seems to violate the county's open burning ban:
http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=12411&sid=33 "
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Foolish Down Easterner wrote on Aug 1, 2008 4:07 PM:
Also, if they only need to keep three years of records why did you stop at the year 2000 and not 2004 or 2005?? "