The County Line
- Volume 50, Number 5 - 2006
Association's Environmental Steering Committee faces another uphill battle
Failure. In this case, the act of writing this column is evidence that we’ve failed – actually that we’ve failed miserably.
A few years ago, the Association set out to pass legislation that would increase the enforcement of Alabama’s litter laws. If you’ve driven along the state’s rural road system lately, then you understand the reference to “failure.” Put as delicately as possible, the roadsides in our state are dirty – really dirty.
One of the Association’s most active steering committees is the group that focuses its attention on environmental issues. Although the membership of the group has changed over the years, the group’s interest in cleaning our state has not shifted. Each year, the group debates and discusses legislative ideas and makes recommendations to the membership.
Some years the membership decides to go in a different direction with its legislative priorities. But, at least three times in the last 20 years, a legislative measure on litter has made its way onto the Association’s legislative “wish list.”
Twice we have convinced the Alabama Legislature to increase the fine for those who are convicted of littering in Alabama. Both times the legislation was passed, and both times there was no noticeable change in the amount of roadside litter.
As an alternative approach to simply increasing the “costs” of littering by hiking the fines, the Association asked the Alabama Legislature for language that would allow for the filing of a case of “criminal littering” against those persons whose names appeared on documents found in an accumulation of litter. The belief was we’d really reduce the amount of litter in our state by simply having the ability to “make cases” without actually being required to observe the act of littering. Sound thinking, at the time, I guess. But, still, there as been little noticeable improvement in rural Alabama.
There are probably many reasons for this lack of improvement. Certainly, one could argue that refraining from throwing your fast-food wrapper out the window is more a statement about doing your civic duty than about avoiding a hefty fine. There have been – and there are still – many efforts to address this problem by raising the civic conscience on the issue of litter and involving volunteers throughout our state.
People Against a Littered State has made great strides in raising the public’s awareness of this problem. But, those who work so diligently in this area must often have strong feelings of dejection and discouragement. Because in most cases, you can almost see the litter flying out car windows while you’re on the roadside cleaning what was thrown out last night.
Just the other afternoon as Alabama’s deer season neared its close, I ran into a man who picks up trash along the side of a county road in a pretty typical section of rural Alabama.
Just about every day, he’s out there with his own plastic bags and his own reflective vest, tossing trash into bags. I’ve seen him dozens of times over the last few years. Even stopped and helped him a time or two.
“I can stay out here two hours,” he said the other afternoon as I made my way toward the woods, “and the next morning the road is just as messy again. I don’t understand it.”
Three days later, as I returned for the final afternoon of this year’s deer season, he was picking up trash again. I suspect he was on the roadside this afternoon, too. Probably will be there again tomorrow.
There is no question the legislative efforts have been unproductive. Less than 450 criminal littering cases were made in the entire state of Alabama during 2004 and 2005 combined. That is not a misprint, less than 450 in the entire state during a 24-month period, according to records from the Administrative Office of Courts.
In that rural county where the old gentleman is probably picking up trash today, no cases – not even one – were filed in all of 2004 and 2005, the AOC records show. In fact, no cases were made in a total of six Alabama counties and in another eight counties only one case was made in that 24-month period.
Unfortunately, this isn’t our first column on the issue of litter enforcement. In 2001, we used this space to talk about the abundance of litter on our roadsides; the lack of enforcement of our existing laws; and our desire to look for another legislative solution to this problem.
“By any objective measure,” we wrote then, “our roadsides in Alabama are very unsightly, littered with trash and garbage. Our rural roads are covered with illegal dumps, presenting health hazards in every county in our state.
“Alabama law provides for penalties that seem to be stiff enough to curb this activity. But the statistics – and the garbage – speak for themselves.”
Six years later, we find ourselves facing the same problem. Our litter fines are stiff; we have the ability to make litter cases against persons simply by finding their names on documents in litter piles. But, still the litter piles grow.
When this year’s version of the Environmental Steering Committee convened, there was a noticeably different tone from the membership. Put directly, the group was sick and tired of looking at the litter on our roadsides. And, the group was not very interested in an analysis of why the Association could not fashion a legislative solution. One member even called the following day after he had pondered the outcome of the meeting. He pledged to stop coming to the steering committee meetings because no progress is being made on this important issue.
It is easy to reach that conclusion. Look around the next time you drive on Alabama’s highways. An anti-litter sign stuck here and there on the roadside can’t do much to stop you from throwing trash out of your window. There has to be some other solution.
At this point, the Association is working on another legislative approach to solving this problem. We’re exploring just about anything that we can uncover in an effort to erase the failure — increased fines, new enforcement techniques, stealing ideas from other states.
At this point, we’re still searching for the magic bullet – that one idea that will help clean up our state, and, in the process, eliminate the need to write another column about failure sometime during the fall of 2012.
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