Problems with dog waste in town, in parks and ballfields are ongoing. While there has been some improvement in recent years, people not picking up after their dogs continues to be a recurring issue, especially with the coming of spring.
“With everything thawing, it’s one of the more gross times of the year,” said recreation director Devyn Johnson of Parks and Recreation. “And it’s a bit of a roller coaster. Sometimes people do better than other times.”
Parks and Recreation Director Lucy Robinson and her staff have been working hard to clear parks, fields and playgrounds of dog waste. They also try to forestall the problem through education and reminders on their website and social media pages to the public.
They are in the process of arranging a “poop scoop” event, inviting residents to volunteer their time to help clean up the messes, hoping to schedule it in April.
Joan Sargent, who serves on the Parks and Recreation advisory board, remembers how bad it was in 2021 at Volunteer Park. “At that point, the park was such a mess,” she said, adding that as she was walking her dog and picking up excess dog waste, she saw a teacher escorting a group of students into the park, screaming at the kids not to step in it.
Sargent estimated she collected more than 100 pounds of dog waste at Volunteer Park during that spring, saying at the time that “you couldn’t walk across the entry area without tiptoeing.” It finally galvanized residents into action. “It took a month to clean it up,” she said. “But it really got people’s attention.”
Since then, Sargent said there’s been a turnaround. “People who go there on a daily basis, they take three buckets. They don’t take one. And they pick up after other people.”
Johnson also spoke of several community members who regularly volunteer to pick up after dogs,
Now, Sargent believes the problem areas are at the harbors where dogs live with their owners on boats and tend to use the green spaces there to poop.
“It’s an issue with every harbor,” said Harbormaster Steve Miller, who added that there are dog poop bag dispensers available at all harbors and he encourages everyone to use them, as he and his staff keep an eye out for people not picking up after their dogs. “We try to chase them down when we see them.”
The proximity of dog waste near water correlates to a 2022 study that was done by high school students as part of a Rural Alaska Students in One-Health Research program, to research problems with dog waste getting into ground water along the Volunteer Park trail, amid concerns of the many different health issues can arise from water that has been polluted with animal fecal matter, including cholera, gastroenteritis and E. coli.
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