Sid Peacock has been employed by the Solid Waste Department of Leflore County for 34 years.
Today he serves as the department's director. That means Peacock sees to it that about 120 tons of garbage are disposed of each week.
Those 120 tons are generated by 4,551 households in Leflore County, or everyone who doesn't live in Greenwood.
“I've got a good crew,” said Peacock. “You take my crew, and the board of supervisors working with us, and we get the job done. No one person can take credit. It's a group effort.”
Newly re-elected Chancery Clerk Sam Abraham doesn't see it that way. In Abraham's eyes, Peacock deserves all of the credit for the county being able to charge residents $8.50 a month for weekly pickups.
“Peacock is the main reason Leflore County is where it's at today, in regards to garbage,” said Abraham.
With the city governments in Greenwood and Itta Bena voting recently to raise their garbage rates $2 a-piece, the county has one of the lowest rates in the state. For example, Carroll, Sunflower and Coahoma counties charge residents between $10 and $15 a month for weekly garbage pickups.
“At this point, we offer one of, of not the best garbage services in the state of Mississippi. But I wouldn't have even started trying to lower our garbage rates had we not had a man like Sid Peacock at the helm,” Abraham said.
The month after Abraham was elected to his first term as chancery clerk in 1996, garbage rates for residents in the county jumped from $10 a month to $13. At the time, garbage collection was handled by Sexton, an independent firm.
“That was too high a price to pay, and on top of that, it wasn't efficient,” said Abraham. So he began tinkering with the budget, and just more than 10 years later, the rate is $8.50 a month.
Peacock's crew consists of eight full-timers and eight or nine inmates from the county jail and the Community Work Center. They travel 905 miles of county road every week to collect the trash, a job that requires about $1,000 of fuel a week. They do it with five rear-loading trucks, three knuckle booms and one front-loading truck.
“We get about two, maybe three complaints a week,” said Peacock. “Sometimes we don't get any. But if we get two complaints a week, considering how many people we service, that isn't too bad.
After the trash is gathered, the solid waste department hauls it into the Leflore County Landfill and dumps it.
The landfill, which was began in 1994, has today approximately 988,770 tons of trash in it. It's suited to hold about 3,089,729 tons. That said, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) says it has about a 20-year lifespan ahead.
“You come up with a landfill's life expectancy by looking at the total volume of garbage coming in and how much airspace is committed,” said Trent Jones, who works for the MDEQ. “Think of a landfill's airspace like a box. Though its obviously not going to be square, each landfill has only so much space to put garbage in.”
Leflore isn't the only county using the landfill. Each day, 50-75 trucks from 13 other counties bring trash to the site, which averages 360 tons each day, or 105,000 tons a year.
For Peacock's men, it is strenuous work that begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m.
“When I hire people, they've got to be in good physical shape,” Peacock said. “Lazy people, bad attitudes, let's just say they don't last long.
“Come rain or shine, we're going to be out there. The weather doesn't mean a thing. When you work out here, you don't pray that it doesn't rain, you pray that your raincoat is still in the cab of the truck.”
