Serious litter chokes Pike

By Frances Ruth Harris
MILFORD — Workers are being paid time and a half to spend their Saturdays picking up trash, said Ken Thiel, maintenance supervisor for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PenDOT).
PennDOT has a laundry list of underfunded maintenance projects, but it's also saddled with the ongoing task of retrieving big orange bags of volunteer-harvested litter, Thiel told the county road task force at their April meeting. Maintenance workers try to pick up the bags at the end of the day, on their way back to base, he said. But often they are overwhelmed with trash piles so towering, and bags so numerous, they've had to work some Saturdays.
PennDot wants to change the mindset of people who throw garbage helter-skelter along Pike's roadsides, whether they be residents or tourists.

One particularly bad spot is the shuttle stop/park and ride off Route 739. There sits a mix of household garbage, half-burnt pieces of wood, fast food bags, and cigarette butts. Debris is scattered across the landscape and into the woods.
Several years ago, the district office removed an abandoned van in those woods, said district business manager Chuck DeFebo. A crew chief out crack-sealing with his team discovered huge amounts of garbage on the site.
The crew chief asked a couple of his workers to clean it up, DeFebo said. It took them five days.
Megan Vinnie's office mates affectionately call her "pushy" for her determination to get litter off the roadsides. An Adopt a Highway coordinator, Vinnie said she's made contact with a Milford volunteer who committed to cleaning up the remaining litter and any new trash dumped there after the five-day cleanup. The volunteer will put the now-cold burnt logs — from fires started on the asphalt near the woods, parched to tinder from lack of rain — back into the woods.
Vinnie says thousands of accidents are litter-related and drive up insurance premiums. Ingesting litter causes injury or death to thousands of pets and wild animals. Litter is a breeding ground for vermin and disease-causing bacteria.
Roadside garbage discourages economic development and lowers real estate values, said Vinnie. Businesses don't move to communities that lack the pride to control their litter, she said.
She said some people can't afford to pay for trash pickup — which they've had to do since the end of Pike's recycling program in 2012 — because the cost has gone up. She believes many people take their household trash to gas stations, grocery stores, and other businesses, driving up the cost of commercial operations.
Local municipalities and residents who couldn't easily afford to pick up the slack were dismayed when the county ended its recycling program. But County Commissioner Matt Osterberg said there's just as much recycling being done now as when the county ran the program. The private sector is doing a better job, he said.
"Don't you think it's better for people to have it picked up at their home rather than having to haul it to a center?" he said.
When recycling came to an end, the country was spending $500,000 a year on the recycling program, said Osterberg.
"The total amount spent in 2015 was not greater than the amount spent in 2011 when the county had recycling," he said.
Tony Puorro, who runs County Waste and Recycling of Pennsylvania, which picks up trash and materials for recycling in Pike County, agrees. Prices are actually lower than when he started in the business, he said.
Puorro insists that litter isn't about the price of hauling or the defunct recycling program. The same people who would pay $20 would pay $25 rather than dump their trash, he said.
Instead, he said, litter is all about the litter bugs. Trash dumped unlawfully often contains unpaid bills, so the same people who refuse to pay for trash pickup also don't pay their bills, he said.
"People take bags to the gas station or grocery story or drug store or just toss bags where they know they will not be held accountable," he said.
He said some of his commercial customers in Pike County have lock bars on their dumpsters, especially in Dingman Township and Lords Valley.
"We can move from the subject of trash to the subject of ethics pretty fast," said Puorro. "Anyone seeing dumping trash and garbage should get the tag number and report them."
Anyone can join the campaign for cleaner roads by joining the 2016 Great American Pennsylvania Cleanup. PennDOT in Pike County gives bags to residents and groups who adopt areas. For those interested in helping out, contact Vennie at 570-296-7193 or email her at mevennie@pa.gov.