Keep New York Beautiful

"Clean Week" Initiative Underway By State DOT

If that Indian who appeared in those "Keep America Beautiful" commercials of the 70s was alive today, he'd be crying a river.

With all the trash and litter along New York's roadways, even the "Give A Hoot, Don't Pollute" owl would have flown the coop!

Clearly, we haven't learned a darned thing from those public service announcements -- or maybe we've just forgotten them -- as we continue to throw litter out of car windows and drop our coffee cups and newspapers on the sidewalks, dumping on New York with abandon.

Perhaps the State, Counties, Villages and Towns need to start enforcing the NO LITTERING/NO DUMPING LAWS, and begin to hand out hefty summonses to those who use the roadways, sidewalks, parks and beaches as trash recepticles.
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LI roads undergo cleanup this week
By John Valenti
john.valenti@newsday.com

Think twice before tossing that next cigarette butt, fast food wrapper, coffee cup, napkin or other piece of trash out of the car window.

Because officials at the New York State Department of Transportation said it cost approximately $2.2 million to clean up all the trash tossed onto state roads on Long Island in 2006.

Guess who footed the bill? Yup. You, the taxpayer.

This week, in an effort to make drivers more aware of how much that discarded napkin really costs, state transportation officials are sponsoring "CLEAN Week '07." CLEAN stands for Create a Long Island Environmentally Aesthetic and Neat.

The title may be unwieldy - and a bit of a stretch. Then again, so is all the garbage. Highway debris and litter not only have an affect on aesthetics, dirtying the roads, but they can be dangerous as well.

Besides being an eyesore, larger pieces of garbage -- such as discarded trash bags, bottles, mattresses -- can lead to accidents and injuries. Smaller pieces of trash, such as discarded coffee cups, can become breeding grounds for disease, carrying mosquitoes. Trash can also cause fires.

In conjunction with Earth Week, maintenance crews will be out in force this week cleaning trash from state roadways. The "CLEAN Week" initiative will be coordinated with law enforcement agencies, who will be ticketing offenders, as well as with construction contractors, Adopt-A-Highway and Sponsor-A-Highway groups. The American Red Cross will utilize their Community Service Patrol, compromised of court-mandated service workers, to help pick up litter.

The hope is that motorists will get the message and stop littering.

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.