A spot off of Route 146 has long been a favorite of crabbers, fishers, and residents, but mountains of trash left in the area have endangered it. After the trash was left in the area, the Department of Transportation (DOT) closed off the location, but now members of the Shellfish Commission have found a way to keep the location open and clean.

Shellfish Commission Chair Alison Varian said the commission is now paying a trash service to set up a bin and collect the trash on a regular basis. She said this will help keep the area presentable.

“The Shellfish Commission saw that we were losing access to a very popular place and we got involved and talked to the selectmen and said that we would foot the bill for having a trash can put there and emptied regularly,” she said.

Varian said the trash situation at the popular crabbing location got out of hand when a good Samaritan left a trash bin at the location, but the bin was never emptied.

“People put all their trash into it, animals got into it, nobody dumped it, and there was trash everywhere,” she said.

Varian said one of the reasons the area became so polluted has to do with the type of garbage people were leaving after a day of crabbing.

“One of the reasons is a lot of people like using chicken parts [as bait], so they buy trays of chicken parts at the grocery store and I think the last thing they want to bring back to the car is chicken that has been out in the sun all day,” she said. “That is what most of the garbage is—Stop & Shop bags and chicken containers.”

With trash overflowing, residents complained to the DOT about the situation.

“A resident complained that the area was atrocious and not good for the ecology of the area,” she said. “The DOT shut down the area and stopped public access to it. That was their solution.”

According to Varian, the DOT put up blockades that forced people to park in all the wrong places. However, according to DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick, putting up blockades was necessary at the time.

“The area was described by folks in the field as a complete disaster—garbage, bait, other debris everywhere,” he said. “The bottom line is we have areas like this that pop up across the state that people absolutely abuse and it turns into more than a full time job for the DOT. Our response is, if you are not going to take care of it, then we do not have to give you access to these areas. It is not our full time job to be out there cleaning up after people.”

Due to community backlash, the blockades were up for about a week before a compromise was reached.

“We spoke to the Town of Guilford and they agreed to maintain the area if we removed the blocks,” said Nursick.

The blockades have been down for a week and Varian said the commission is working to raise awareness about keeping the area clean.

“We are trying to talk to people who use the area regularly to see if they will be ambassadors for the area and help people clean,” she said. “Hopefully it will all go well.”

Beyond keeping the immediate area clean, Varian said garbage control is crucial for protecting the water as well.

“That particular spot flows directly into the Sound [and] into Great Harbor, and it flows into a recreational shellfish bed. The river itself leads to a commercial shellfish bed, so it is important to us that we don’t have a lot of trash flowing down the river,” she said. “This is why we have mainly stepped up just to make sure everything is good for the river.”