Commentary: Abandoned derelict vehicles. You have to keep your weeds down or you’ll get fined but who’s taking responsibility for these giant eyesores to our landscape??

By BEN OLSON/for The Herald  —  If you’re done with your car, travel trailer or gas-hog of an RV, and it just seems like too much work to sell to another buyer or a salvage yard, you’re in the right state. Over the brief time that I’ve lived in Oregon, I have seen dozens of the aforementioned vehicles abandoned. There’s probably an interesting story about the events that ultimately led to each abandonment.

Nevertheless, the end result is another vehicle left, never to move under its own power again. Just waiting for the people who can’t sleep at night to jimmy the doors open to find something of value. Sometimes it appears to amuse vandals to just break all the glass and scatter the contents of the vehicle around. What fun. Somebody will clean this up. Or not.

Oregon’s liberal laws hinder enforcement

Every other place that I have lived did not have this problem. If a vehicle broke down and was left along a highway, it would be red tagged in short order, and 24 hours later it would be towed to an impoundment yard. The registered owner would have to deal with the expense, sooner or later. The fees at the impoundment continue to add up. If the owner failed to pay the towing and impound fees, he or she would ultimately be unable to renew their driver’s license or register any other vehicles. From my reading of Oregon law, a person who abandons a vehicle loses their claim to it, but also is able to avoid any of the expenses that were incurred through the towing and salvage process. It stands to reason that if people aren’t held accountable, many of them will behave badly.

Who is responsible – city hall to police department and back to city hall – the usual run around?

Each county and municipality have their own way of dealing with abandoned vehicles. The National Forests are federal land, and dealt with by agents of the US government, occasionally getting assistance from the county sheriff’s office. I was curious to find out how the city of Oakridge deals with the problem. At the city administrative office, I was told that it was dealt with by the police department.

When, minutes later, I talked with an Oakridge Police Officer, I was told that tickets were issued and after a matter of days, the offending vehicle may be towed away. My follow-up questions concerned why not all vehicles were towed, and where they were taken. The phrase, “on a case-by-case basis” didn’t clear anything up for me. At that point I was told to go to the City Administrative Office if I needed a more detailed explanation of how things work in Oakridge.

Private vs federal land

What is different about this part of America and everywhere else I’ve ever lived? In a nutshell, private property. In most places east of the Rocky Mountains, the land is privately owned, and the owner has incentives to not allow others to abuse or degrade that property. Here in this part of Lane County, we have a few square miles of private land surrounded by a million acres of National Forest. Despite the good intentions of the agency charged with administering our federal land, they simply aren’t up to the task.

Lack of manpower and funding are at the heart of it. Abandoning vehicles and dumping garbage in the National Forest is certainly the “tragedy of the commons” that we who live in Oakridge have to deal with.

I wish that I could offer a solution that would magically fix this problem, but as it is, this will continue to plague us as long as people aren’t held accountable. It’s the same agency that comes up with millions of dollars to fight forest fires, yet has no money to patrol that same land, telling people that it’s too dry to have an open campfire.

Volunteer cleanup groups work with limited resources

Groups such as the 5 Rivers Group in the Oakridge/Westfir area and The Friends of Fall Creek Watershed work at cleaning up dumpsites and removing abandoned vehicles with volunteer labor and minimal financial assistance to pay the dumping fees and towing costs. At times it seems that the degradation happens faster than the ability of these groups to clean things up. 

In Oregon, littering is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable with fines up to $6,250, imprisonment up to one year, or both. If that’s what you’re facing for throwing your bag of fast-food wrappers out your car window, why are people allowed to walk away scot-free from abandoning their vehicle?

Do your part to help curb this travesty

What can we do to address the problem of vehicle abandonment? Send a note to your legislator to ask them to work toward a better way to enforce the laws that would hold people accountable. Any time you sell a titled vehicle of any sort, in addition to signing the title over, get a signed bill of sale from the buyer, complete with the time and date of the sale and a valid driver’s license number. You should do that for your own protection. If you want to help clean up the forest land that surrounds us, consider volunteering to help the 5 River Group and the Friends of Fall Creek Watershed, Inc. You can find them on Facebook.