Is landfill proper burial for pets?

Cathy Scott

Saturday, Oct. 11, 1997 | 7:28 a.m.

Brett Gall was still in shock when his roommate called animal control just minutes after Gall's cat, Felix, was caught under his car and carried half a block.

Anthony Hernandez, Gall's roommate, called Clark County Animal Control about 6 p.m. that Sunday to ask for advice or see if they could pick up the 2-year-old cat, which had died in the accident.

Hernandez was told by an employee to "double bag it and put it out with the trash."

Gall was outraged.

"This is my pet," said Gall, a bicycle security officer at the Rio hotel-casino. "They want me to dump him and throw him out with the trash? I can't believe it."

Hernandez, too, was surprised and had a hard time passing that information on to his grieving friend.

"That cat was like his baby," Hernandez said. "How could I tell my best friend to put his cat on the curb with the trash? That's wrong. They shouldn't tell people that."

The operator with animal control said that's what he's told to tell pet owners in such cases. If the cat had been a stray, animal control would have picked it up off the street.

Either way, the operator told a reporter, "it's going to end up in the landfill."

Unlike some other cities, there are no ordinances in Clark County or Las Vegas prohibiting people from putting dead animals on the curb for trash pickup. The only ordinance addressing dead animals makes it illegal to bury pets on private property.

The city of Las Vegas' animal control unit picks up dead animals from public property, contracting with Dewey Animal Shelter. If the animal is on private property, residents are told to drop off the animals at the shelter so they can be disposed of. The Dewey shelter also uses the landfill.

Once at the Apex Regional Landfill, 15 miles northeast of Las Vegas, the carcasses are dumped in a separate pit, said Jim Rankin, the landfill manager. The pit is lined with plastic, which is a federal regulation, he said.

"They're disposed of separately," Rankin said. "Trucks are directed to a special dumping area."

But that's only the dead animals picked up by animal control. Those double-bagged and put in the trash end up in the regular landfill.

Vic Skarr, environmental health supervisor with the Clark County Health District, said there aren't many diseases transferred from animal to man, so putting them out on the curb doesn't pose a health threat.

"It's not a health issue," he said. "The worst case is it would stink a little bit. It's organic material that decays. It's more of an emotional issue. Small animals are frequently disposed of in regular garbage. It may not sound right to people, but that's the fact."

Skarr said it wouldn't be economically feasible in Clark County to turn dead animals into fertilizer, a practice in other communities.

"If we were going to compost anything, we would prefer that it be sewage waste," he said. "There isn't a lot of interest in composting. Our huge supply of garbage every day from the hotels goes to feed some pigs, and recycling and the rest of it goes to the landfill."

Four years ago, the city of Henderson purchased a $50,000 incinerator and its animal control division at West Athens Avenue and Moser Road began cremating dead animals instead of dumping them in the landfill.

"We didn't like the idea of the landfill," said Bob Oelke, an animal control officer. "To lose a pet is bad enough. To think about it being in a Dumpster is worse. People have suffered enough trauma."

In Henderson, residents are told to bring their pets to the animal shelter. They're incinerated at no charge, Oelke said.

After hours, residents can bring dead or live animals and put them in an impound cage, and officers retrieve them in the morning, Oelke said.

Even before the incinerator was purchased, Oelke said it wasn't a policy in Henderson to tell residents to discard their pets in the trash.

Environmental problems were also a reason they purchased the crematorium, Oelke said.

"I think eventally dumping dead animals in the landfill is going to become a problem," he said. "When we put the animals to sleep, we use drugs. That could open up a whole new can of worms with the EPA. The drugs could leak into the water supply.

North Las Vegas contracts with the Dewey Animal Shelter to send the carcasses to the landfill.

Al Aguinaga, director of the Animal Foundation at 700 N. Mojave Road, is in the process of obtaining an incinerator for the facility, which serves as the city of Las Vegas' pound.

His facility averages one dead animal a day, he said. They're put in a freezer and every 10 days a subcontractor picks up the carcasses and drives them to the Apex landfill.

"The ideal setting is cremation," Aguinaga said. "I think that's the way it should be for the Earth's sake. And it's an acceptable method for people to be comfortable with."

When pet owners call to say their animals have died, "we tell them to bring them in," Aguinaga said. "We don't tell anyone to place a dead animal in the trash. That's not very sensitive. That's just not right, putting them out on the curb."

In California, most dead animals end up at a rendering plant where they are recycled into fertilizer. There are two in the state -- one in Los Angeles and one in Sacramento.

Sandy Ramey, owner of Dead Animal Removal Services, contracts with San Diego County for dead animal removal. Her company, too, takes them to the county's landfill. But the area's shelters and veterinarians use West Coast Rendering, a plant in Los Angeles, to recycle the bodies into fertilizer.

Putting animals out with the trash is considered illegal dumping in San Diego County, she said. The law prohibits the dumping of a dead animal within 100 feet of an alley, street, highway or road.

"Each city has its own way of handling it," she said. "The basic law (in San Diego County) is anything that can be recycled will be recycled."

At the county landfill there, the carcasses are handled separately, with an added handling fee, an employee said.

Les Gould, supervisor of the solid waste branch of the state Division of Environmental Protection, said landfills in Nevada are required to have a separate pit for disposal of dead animals.

"It's because you can at a landfill get large quantities together and rather than pile them up, they need to dump them separately and cover them immediately," Gould said. "I don't believe there's any health threat associated with this."

Health threat or not, Gall says there's got to be a better way. He ended up calling a crematorium, paying $50 for his cat to be picked up that night and cremated. It was worth it, he said, but he wouldn't mind if his taxes went toward cremation services.

"Then they wouldn't have to tell people to double-bag their pets and put them out on the curb, like garbage," he said.

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