Reward offered in dirty diaper dumping case

The Maine Warden Service is offering a $500 reward for information that leads to the person tossing 5-gallon buckets filled with dirty diapers in Franklin County streams. Twenty four of the bright orange buckets have been recovered from streams in Wilton and Farmington within the past couple of months, wardens said. The buckets have been found near Temple Stream in Farmington and Wilson Stream, off the Pond Road in Wilton.



“I think it’s somebody local. Nobody’s travelling across the state to get rid of this, I don’t believe,” Warden Daniel Christianson said. “Somebody local, not sure why. There’s no rhyme or reason why somebody would be dumping stuff like that in the water. Not only is this just litter, it’s (human) waste and there is water contamination that’s going to happen because those lids won't stay on those buckets forever,” Christianson added.



“Oh, that’s horrible,” Temple resident Kathy Shepard said when she heard the news. “That’s horrible because people fish in here and I think they eat the fish. This is gross.” The $500 reward is for information leading to a summons and conviction in the littering case. Wardens are confident they’ll be able to trace the buckets. They’re already analyzing the evidence. “The contents themselves, Warden McCabe found that they’re adult diapers, stuffed in 5 gallon Home Depot buckets, with the lid closed,” Christianson said.


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Investigators have some theories, but no suspects yet. “Maybe somebody is getting paid to remove these, (and) instead of paying to get rid of them, they’re just dumping them,” Christianson said. If the culprit is eventually caught, Wardens said the person could be charged with littering, which carries a $200 fine per bucket, totalling around $5,000. “They have to put those people in jail so other people won’t do it,” Kathy Shepard added. Wardens are asking that anyone with information contact them.