Roadside litter in Lee County has been an ongoing problem for many years, and it has not gone unnoticed by citizens, by community organizations like Keep Lee County Beautiful or by government figures.
District 4 County Commissioner Robert Ham has made solving this problem and keeping Lee County clean one of his main priorities.
“Taxpayers are saying they want the side of the roads cleaned up and want a better system,” Ham said.
Ham attributes the majority of the problem to three sources: people throwing trash out the window of cars, trash in route to collection sites blowing out of trucks and personal vehicles accidentally and, less significantly, dumping.
Ham said the worst areas for litter in Lee County are roads within 2 miles of convenience stores, areas around Lake Harding and rural areas, especially near Loachapoka.
“I have asked people who were ahead of me in this position and the mayors of Auburn and Opelika what to do about the litter problem and not a single one of them has given me and answer other than to just pick it up,” Ham said.
Over the past few years, problems with litter and trash collection have become exacerbated due to population growth in Lee County. According to Ham, the county has outgrown the current trash collection sites which causes them to overflow and for trash to spill out.
Lee County Commissioners and Environmental Services personnel have released a request for proposal, seeking contractors to facilitate curbside collection in rural areas within the county’s budget.
“The whole issue is getting revamped in Lee County for the better; we don’t like the way things look right now, but everything has a cost associated with it,” Ham said.
Another factor that has worsened roadside litter recently is COVID-19.
“When COVID hit, Sheriff Jones knew that he could not let the guys out of the jail to come out and pick up trash on the side of the road due to the risk of prisoners catching COVID,” Ham said.
Luckily, four weeks ago, prisoners were allowed to start coming back out, and now eight prisoners work every day with Environmental Services to clean up 850 miles of roadsides.
According to Ham, highway department workers have also begun to pick up trash when they are unable to work on the roads due to weather conditions.
Ham said he hopes these efforts will reduce the amount of litter along roadsides, but the problem will never truly be solved if people continue to litter.
Keep Lee County Beautiful was recently established to assist in roadside cleanup.
Micah Messer, founder of Keep Lee County Beautiful, has noticed the litter problem in the area for many years.
“The primary reason we do it is as you can see, we have a lot of trash problems in Lee County and this has been an ongoing issue,” Messer said.
Messer started Keep Lee County Beautiful on March 14, 2021, and held the first Operation Roadside Cleanup on March 27. Their current focus is cleaning up roadsides with the most trash which includes smaller county roads and back roads mostly in lower Lee County.
“The larger roads like 280, 169 and highway 80 will get cleaned up by the state, but these small back roads just don’t get the attention they need,” Messer said.
At the first Operation Roadside Cleanup event, a group of just six volunteers cleaned up 0.1 miles of road. On this small stretch, they filled 27 50-gallon trash bags with litter and also picked up 19 tires, three buckets, a road sign, a vacuum, a microwave and a plastic bin.
“The road we tackled Saturday I don’t think has been cleaned up in at least a decade, we found some things that were very old,” Messer said.
Messer noticed areas that were clearly sites used for dumping alongside smaller roads.
“When we see things like tires, vacuums and microwaves we know they are being dumped because they aren’t just being randomly blown out the back of a pickup truck,” Messer said.
The most common items that Messer and his team saw were beer bottles and cans and fast-food containers along with disposable masks, plastic bags and soda cans.
The next Operation Roadside Cleanup event is on April 17 and Messer hopes to see a larger turnout now that the organization has gained more attention, especially on social media.
“If you think there is a problem with trash on the side of the road, then come help me clean it up; the more people we have the more impact we can have and the quicker we can get this under control,” Messer said.
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