Close to Nowhere
A couple weeks ago a Waterford friend and neighbor got on her soapbox on Facebook and tried to wake up the community about a huge, nasty problem.
Litter.
Her main theme was: “Our county roads or highways are not a dump site.”
There were 43 comments on Lynn Shaw’s irate post. Every one of them was as irate as she is.
A day or so after I posted an irate comment of my own, I happened to be driving down Highway 7 towards Oxford. I was floored. The amount of trash on the side of the road before you get to the Tallaatchie River bridge was incredible. It looked like a garbage truck had driven that way with its back door open and pouring garbage into the wind. The only saving grace was that as I crossed the Lafayette County line the litter didn’t get any better. I was almost relieved that there was as much trash in our neighboring county as ours.
My oldest granddaughter Merideth and her family live in Coldwater. Driving in that area and around Hernando I’ve noticed that litter is greatly reduced. The expressway exits are clean and pretty with grass instead of trash. The stretches of road around there are also clean and attractive.
Are the people around Coldwater and Hernando neater than Marshall and Lafayette countians?
I live on Highway 310, which intersects with Highway 7. As you turn off Highway 7 onto Highway 310, the sides of the road are almost white with trash.
If the state has mowed along our road, the amount of trash exposed is horrendous.
Right now, up and down Highway 310, not only is the normal amount of litter scattered but apparently some sort of construction truck lost most of a load. All the way down the side of the highway are bags of white, powdery looking stuff (kinda like ground up drywall) and rolls of white plastic and extra large black plastic bags. My side of the road is covered with the customary trash.
Now, what I want to know is – why? Why do people feel like they need to keep their cars clean by throwing their trash out on the highway? Why don’t they keep sacks from stores in their cars and put their trash in those bags and then throw those bags in a garbage can? That’s pretty easy. I know, because that’s what I do. And if I don’t have an empty sack in my car, I just leave the trash on the floor in my car until I am forced to stop at a gas station and then while my car is guzzling gas down into its tank, I pick up all the trash out of the back floorboard and put it in the large trash can conveniently located right beside the gas pumps.
Our little part of Mississippi is a beautiful area. Or it could be, if you could see it instead of the trash.
I am the first to admit I don’t have a clue as to how to solve the enormous problem of litter. All I know is that it’s going to take everyone to work on the problem.
We can all start by not rolling our windows down in our cars and throwing that smelly, fast food bag of leftovers out. The car is still going to smell like fast food
Don’t throw your trash out the windows. If you see someone throw trash out, write down their license plate number and report it. The MDOT litter person in our area is: District II: Courtney Collins Goode, P.O. Box 660, Batesville, MS 38606, phone 662-563-4541, or email cgoode@mdot.ms.gov.
Let’s try and make our little piece of Mississippi beautiful again.