Three new trash trucks rolled into Selma on Monday.
Public works employees are happy to see them. So should the rest of us.
Mayor George Evans says they should be on the road sometime this week. All that’s left is getting them insured so they can go to work.
This is part of your bond issue dollars at work. These trash trucks will motor over the city, picking up debris — limbs, leaves, boxes — so Selma can improve in the presentation department.
Some people have complained about so much emphasis on appearances. But how a community cares for itself says a lot about where it places its priorities in its people.
People accumulate tons of trash each year. This is paperboard from boxes, yard trimmings and tree limbs, plain old trash. The garbage is picked up each week from those green containers most people pull out to the street.
Now to those who complain about too much emphasis placed on appearances; consider the health challenges. This country is only about 150 years from when people died from the waste they generated.
It’s possible today.
Think about the Asian tiger mosquito, which has been found to be infected with the LaCrosse encephalitis viruses and West Nile virus. They breed in these trash piles.
Flies also are a problem. They generally show up first to a place where there’s refuse. They spread diseases such as salmonella by transporting germs on their legs. One fly won’t make a body sick, likely, but a lot of them do.
Cockroaches also spread bacteria a lot in the same way flies do. They crawl and don’t have as wide a range.
Then come rats. Rats aren’t so much the problem but rats have fleas, and fleas carry diseases to humans. Some of those old diseases? Typhus, bacterial fever, and hantavirus, a rare pulmonary syndrome.
So, the trucks are welcomed and so is the clean-up.
If you don’t want to be pretty; if that’s a waste of time, then think about health issues.