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Illegal dumping costing business owners in York County

Business owners said it's been an issue for a few years.

YORK COUNTY, Va. — York County business owners said they're stuck in some mess, and they're fed up. They said their dumpsters are getting full, but it's not their trash. 

Felicia Fitzhugh is the co-owner of Pet Zone. She said what she's finding in their dumpsters is remarkable.

“Furniture, trash, wood, trees, tires,” Fitzhugh said.

She said they use Waste Management for their garbage. 

According to Fitzhugh, people dumping their personal trash in the store's garbage is an ongoing problem, and the business has to pay the price.

“Then we don't have any space for our trash, which we do very large orders,” Fitzhugh said. “We have to pay fees if we're overloading the trash.”

Fitzhugh said other people's trash started filling up their dumpsters, to where they couldn't close them and that results in a fee. She said Waste Management officials told them it's still their responsibility.

“Pretty much our trash fee right now is another fee we could be using for products or animals,” Fitzhugh said.

A store manager at Big Lots said they also have issues with people dumping trash in their dumpsters. She told 13News Now people are even cutting the locks on the containers.

Waste Management Public Affairs Coordinator Stephany Holguin sent 13News Now a statement:

Our customers are our top priority, Waste Management does provide customers the option to get padlocks and gravity bar locks for their commercial containers to avoid illegal dumping. Padlocks are placed on the container’s side doors and a gravity bar lock is placed on top of the container. Waste Management will provide free padlocks at our customers' request.

Fitzhugh, like other business owners, said she just wants people to realize the extra fees are hurting business.

“We have locks now but sometimes there's trash sitting around the dumpster,” Fitzhugh said. “If we had something big we had to dump, we would find a dump site. We wouldn't use someone else's dumpster.”

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