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NATCHEZ — Robert Prospere thinks people should do the right thing.

That’s why when he saw a man pull off the road near his home in Church Hill, get out and open his trunk, grab two bags of garbage and toss them into a ravine, Prospere pulled up beside him and rolled down his window.

“I won’t say the words I said to him, but I told him that’s not a dump and to crawl down that ravine and pick up those two bags of garbage,” Prospere said.

The man responded by telling Prospere he couldn’t because he didn’t have his boots on.

“I told him I would follow him to his house so he could get his boots. And I did. He got his boots and I followed him back and he went down that ravine and got those two bags of garbage,” he said.

Prospere, a retired Natchez dentist, and his wife, Kathy, live on property near Church Hill in Jefferson County. Today, Prospere spends his time keeping his property “clean and nice. I have some cows that help me keep the place under control.”

While Prospere was in the ravine with the man who tossed the garbage bags, he happened to look up and see that someone had also dumped about 250 tires there.

On Tuesday of last week, Prospere started hauling those tires from the ravine.

No, they weren’t dumped on his property, but it didn’t sit right with him that someone had just dumped them there.

He called Jefferson County officials and told them about the dumped tires.

“Jefferson County jumped on it like you would not believe. I called a supervisor first and he gave me a woman’s name to call. I did and she took a message and told me someone would call me back, and he did,” Prospere said. “Everything they have told me they were going to do, they have done.”

The someone was Kreshod McKnight, the Jefferson County Solid Waste Collection and Code Enforcement officer.

Prospere told McKnight he would go into that ravine and bring those tires up and asked if Jefferson County would come to collect them from the side of the road.

“I was shocked when he was willing to do that,” McKnight said. 

“It has been a job, I’ll tell you,” Prospere said. “I was going to hire someone to help me do it, but anything I can do myself, I’ll just do it.”

Using a 25-foot chain, Prospere has gone down into the ravine and used to pull up eight or 10 tires at a time with the help of his tractor.

“I climb down in that hole, tie them up, and pull them out,” said Prospere, who is 75. “I started on Tuesday and have worked on it every day and am hoping to finish today (Friday). Mr. McKnight was going to come pick them up on Friday, but I called him and told him not to come today. And it’s going to be too cold next week, so I told him to come the next week.”

In the meantime, the tires are neatly stacked on the side of the road, along with Prospere’s handwritten sign reminding people the county can impose a $1,000 fine for illegal dumping.

McKnight said he would get the tires next week, which will be recycled.

“We are a partner with a program that will come get the tires and dispose of them in the proper way,” he said. 

“Illegal dumping is a problem in Jefferson County, but we are trying to cut back on it and figure out a solution. We have told people we have a spot at the county barn that they can dump for free, but they have been doing it illegally for so long, it’s a habit,” McKnight said. “We have some hot spots where we are installing cameras, and we will be letting people know that if they dump, we plan on prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law.”

In the meantime, even though it’s not his property, Prospere plans to put up a barbed wire fence that will make access to the ravine for dumping difficult.

“If you don’t stand up to it, they will just continue to do it,” Prospere said.