-DC's biggest litter offenders are believed to be those between 6 and 24 years of age.
-$25-30 million of DPW's $75 million annual solid waste budget goes to picking up street and alley litter.
Then there is always the always infuriating issue of improper disposal...
Thanks to Ben from 11th Street for sending in the article.
15 comments:
i took the circulator home the other night around 10pm and two teenage girls threw their empty starbucks cups out the bus door when it opened to let customers off - not once, but twice. seriously?
All well and good but, just be careful what sort of litter you throw away.
Remember this classic DC story from a few years back?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50723-2004May23.html
corrected link for washingtonpost.com
/wp-dyn/articles/A50723-2004May23.html
H street is the worst area for littering. Its not like people look over their shoulders and sneak a gum wrapper onto the ground. Its blatent and accepted. People simply don't care and I seriously doubt a cheezy public relations compaign is going lesson the number of chicken bones on my street. Take a fraction of that DPW budget and hire 5 people who do nothing but write $75 tickets all day. Enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.
We should hire a cadre of folks with bamboo sticks to beat litterers with. But you need to get to them *right* after they do it, and you need to be consistent.
Nothing new to those among us living near H St, but the article also points out the following from Public Works Director William O. Howland Jr: "The heaviest concentration of daytime crews work the area of 14th and U streets in Northwest, the H Street corridor in Northeast and the Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue corridor in Southeast."
I live near the corner of H and 8th, and, man, it is unbelievable. It is knee deep some days.
The other morning, I looked out my window to see a fire dept ladder truck idling on the street below waiting for the light. While I watched, the fireman who sits in the cab in the back to steer the rear of the big truck tossed his LIT cigarette butt out the window onto the street.
Yeah, littering bad, etc., but mostly IRONY!
my question is, how can the police, or whoever the "meter maids" of littering would be, write a ticket to a pedestrian. If they have no identification, no vehicle, no residence to identify them...wouldn't a whole lot of John/Jane Doe's get a ticket, that ultimately would become litter itslef with no repercussions?
I'm much more conerned with motor vehicles blowing through cross-walks with people in them. I'd much much rather see some enforcement on that issue.
And I say this as someone fortunate enough to live a couple blocks from 7-11 and on the commuting path of the Stuart-Hobson students. There's nothing like watching kids throw their trash into you yard on a dialy basis.
we need a BID. yes, a proper BID (business improvement district)
forget the dc police force.
not that i'm knocking them......
they have a lot on their hands.
i called about a joyride vehicle that crashed into our street. it took them a while to get to the scene, but as one officer told me, they were busy trying to save a baby in SW. apparently the mother was going to throw a two year old out of her second story window.
when you put it into perspective, trash is a minor problem that will be solved in due time.
but it's not a bad idea to keep the force on their toes.
my big complaint is that i see parking enforcement cars driving right by totally illegally parked cars... while on their cell phones!
the accountability factor within dc government is crappy. yeah, they have great web services, but on the ground, many offices leave a lot to be desired.
the worst was when i got ticketed for overstaying my time, and another vehicle in front of me FROM VIRGINIA didn't get anything, even though we both parked on the street at the same time.
must have been the boyfriend calling right after she ticketed me.
no rhyme or reason in dc.
and of course, no one complains unless it affects them.
and that, in dc, is haphazard.
it sucks to see your car ticketed (with dc plates), and the suburbanites walking away without any ticket at all.
i've met and talked with these folks that ticket cars. i actually accrued $1k in tickets, because the registration/whatever was stuck on my motorcycle's windshield.... which is where the DC DMV told me to put it. the lame parking enforcement just meandereed the sidewalks and didn't see anything on my plate, so they ticketed me.
fine for virginia, not fine for dc.
i had to take time off of work to fight the tickets (which i won), but i never should have had to do that.
if you're gonna hire people to SERVICE THE PEOPLE, you should probably train them.
most of the parking enforcement folks are pretty clueles, or just careless.
which bring about the whole thing about parking on h street.
yeah, let's get a big box parking joint on h street. at least it will be on private property with some rules and regulations - even if it's ugly as hell and suburbanite TO THE MAX.
at least you don't get ticketed at random from some high school drop out that could give a sh"t lesss about following the law, because he/she is on a cell phone with another idiot.
just venting....
My favorite: In front of my house, at the street, is the sewer beneath the sidewalk that leads to the Anacostia. I have witnessed several Checkers customers stop their car at the stop sign, car idling, get out, walk to the sewer opening and stuff their trash down into the sewer opening. It's happened more than once, amazingly. Of course, I felt like I should shout from my window, but we all know the consequences that risks. So I called DC public works to at least get a little sticker applied to the lid of the concrete opening that has that little fish emblem and says "Empties to the Anacostia" and they didnt know what I was talking about. So I tried to get them to install a grid - no succeess. So I tried to ge them to clean it -- nope, not on their schedule. Remember that the next time folks are asked to volunteer to clean the Anacostia Riverfront. It could be stopped at the source - - but there are no littering laws in DC, the police say, no, there's not.
welcome to the capital of the most powerful nation on earth...
kind of incompetent on the most basic of levels, no?
maybe we should increase taxes to fix our 'local' problem.
yeah, that's the ticket.
or we could just vent on blogs, and hope that someone does something...
good reading though, and loads of fun.
oops, gotta go. there's a hooker on my block and i need to call the police, cuz.... they'll take care of it.
uh huh....
Beg to differ with Poo poo. I think ticketing cars is one of the few things DC does effeciently. Yes, it can be arbitrary and its frustrating to watch parking enforcement park illegally to ticket a call while talking on their cell phone, and blah, blah, blah but I drive an extra block to park legally and I always get temp stickers for my guests because I know there is a good chance I'm going to get pinched by one of those yahoos. Move that model to litter enforcement on H street. And nobody's talking raising taxes. just redirecting money already spent by DPW to stop litter on the front end. We'd still have the same # of police to save Poo Poo from the hooker.
Why dont you just do what we do on our block of 7th St? Form a neighborhood taskforce with the other residents on your block and band together to clean up the messy street yourselves. If you wait for the mayor's office "task force" you might as well hold your breath. As the saying goes...."if you want something done right..."
Post a Comment