Published: April 10, 2007 11:21 pm         

Failure of bottle bill could affect spring road cleanup

Adopt-A-Highway volunteers are shaking off winter’s doldrums and preparing to give West Virginia’s highways a spring cleaning, but are their ranks going to be smaller this year in protest to the bottle bill’s failure?

Undoubtedly, there is some resentment across the state over the Legislature’s refusal to even let a committee work a measure that would impose a redeemable, 10-cent deposit on all beverage containers as a means of reducing roadside litter.

Just how many such volunteer groups will leave their orange vests and work gloves in the closet and sit this spring out in frustration is difficult to determine.

But when the bill’s doom became inevitable in late February, Linda Frame, program director for West Virginia-Citizen Action Group, said resentment already was building among volunteer groups, some of whom advised CAG it wouldn’t help fetch refuse this year.

“It’s frustrating for them to recruit volunteers and coordinate all the supplies needed to go out and clean up a stretch of highway, only to find at the end of the day, someone has dumped a bunch of litter where they had started,” Frame said Tuesday.

“Many have said that a majority of what they pick up is beverage containers.”

By providing incentives for consumers to turn in cans and bottles for the 10-cent deposit, such groups had anticipated a dramatic decline in such litter tossed from moving vehicles along highways — just as it has fallen in states with bottle bills on the books.

Frame said many cleanup volunteers have visited other states and seen firsthand the difference a bottle law makes.

A number of volunteer groups have been picking up trash along West Virginia roads for many years and viewed the bottle bill legislation as a major helping hand in their efforts, Frame said.

“They came up with the idea of their own,” she said.

“At least three heads of Adopt-A-Highway groups called me and said, we’re just not going to pick up this year if we can’t get a legislative committee to put it on the agenda. It’s more of a sense of frustration.”

Some veterans have seen the situation exacerbated in recent years with the advent of bottled water.

“West Virginia has a strong volunteer force committed to keeping the state clean,” Environmental Protection Secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer said in announcing the official cleanup.

April 21 is the designated date for the mission, but groups may take part through May 6.

Jessica Greathouse, communications director for the DEP, said it isn’t possible at this point to see how many, if any, volunteer groups plan to avoid the Adopt-A-Highway program this year because of the bottle bill’s failure.

“We’ve had great volunteers with the Adopt-A-Highway program for many years picking up litter along roads,” she said.

“I hope they continue to do so.”

Two regional DEP offices — in Oak Hill and the headquarters in Charleston — have adopted roads surrounding their structures for cleanup, she pointed out.

“At this point, the legislative session is over, and we’re faced with trying to keep West Virginia litter-free as much as possible,” Greathouse said.

The sight of volunteers along highways can act as a deterrent to littering, she suggested.

“By other people seeing them on the road, they’ll think twice about tossing everything from a cigarette butt to a pop bottle.”

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com