Grass Clippings Out of Place in the Street

The Fates have conspired to make me the designated dog walker, thereby condemning me to daily exposure to dubious yardwaste behavior. Dumping lawn clippings in the street is illegal, though I've never seen enforcement. The county extension (Master Gardeners) service recommends leaving lawn clippings on the lawn, where they quickly filter down and return to the soil. Dumped in a pile like this and left to rot, their high nitrogen  content can get washed into streams.

Either there's a new landscape service that's unaware of the law, or the process of one oblivious homeowner imitating another is at work, because there's been a proliferation of these piles, large and small, in my neighborhood.

I've heard some glowing reports on how the newer mulching mowers chop grass blades up into tiny bits that disappear into the grass, and even older mowers do a good enough job to allow leaving clippings on the lawn. If the grass is left to grow too long and there are too many clippings to leave on the lawn, the clippings make a not-so-shabby mulch for under shrubs or near the base of trees. As long as grass clippings aren't piled too thickly as mulch, they won't produce odor. It's a shame to see so many fine nutrients being dumped in the street where they become an environmental hazard, an eyesore and public burden. At least they'll end up at the composting center on Princeton Pike, but people 100 years down the road will wonder why we burned gas to haul this stuff out of town when it could be an asset in the yard.