Cheryll McAtee and her neighbors live along a rural stretch of Northeast Fourth Plain Road. The residents regularly deal with people throwing trash along their road. (Photos by Amanda Cowan/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
Cheryll McAtee lives in an old farmhouse on a rural stretch of Northeast Fourth Plain Road just outside the Vancouver city limits, which she bought more than 20 years ago. It was a pretty quiet street when she first moved in. She recalls her neighbors riding their horses in the center of the road.
Today the road is busier than ever, and it seems like drivers rarely observe the speed limit. But worse than the traffic for McAtee is the trash that endlessly accumulates along the road — tossed out by seemingly indifferent passers-by.
You just about name it, and McAtee said she’s found it along her road.
“Oh, my God, needles, the top skull of an animal, fruit, apples —I don’t know why they take one or two bites then toss it — half of a banana with the peel … lot of bags, fast-food stuff,” she said.
One time, someone even left a box full of kittens at her neighbor’s mailbox along the busy road.
The trash embeds in the ditch along her road, gets caught in property owners’ fences and blows into their yards. McAtee said she and her neighbors are caught in a never-ending cycle ofcleaning up after the careless.
Littering isn’t just an unsightly, polluting habit — people caught doing it in the county can be charged with a misdemeanor and fined between $50 and $500.
Clark County Public Works saw a steady increase in litter complaints in recent years. There were 11 in 2014, 20 in 2015 and 33 in 2016. However, between the first of the year and March 28 of this year there were seven complaints, half the amount from the same period last year.
“As you can see, our year-to-date totals are actually down, but the numbers tell you only so much,” Jeff Mize, Clark County Public Works spokesman, wrote in an email. “Not everyone who is bothered by litter will take the time to call. Even if littering is actually up — and I don’t know how that could be accurately quantified — it doesn’t necessarily mean that complaints about litter also will be up.”
He also said litter reports tend to increase when the weather is nice and people are out and about.
Because McAtee’s is also a state highway, it falls under the purview of the Washington State Department of Transportation.
WSDOT spokeswoman Tamara Greenwell said the agency has seen an increase in litter recently. While WSDOT maintenance crews are supposed to pick up highway trash, it’s less of a priority than things that might endanger drivers — and sometimes finances can get in the way.
“Our litter-control efforts are sometimes limited because of budgeting,” she said.
WSDOT relies on Adopt-a-Highway groups who volunteer their time to pick up trash along the roadside. But Greenwell said volunteers are less likely to want to spend their free time during the cold, rainy winter gathering trash on the side of a busy road. Moreover, McAtee’s home lies in an area just out of range of two Adopt-a-Highway volunteer groups’ territories.
Greenwell said WSDOT shares the community’s frustration and notes the agency is always looking for more cleanup volunteers.
McAtee hopes that residents of Clark County will take up the charge to keep streets like hers clean and free from litter. She hopes neighborhood associations and community and school groups will organize efforts to pick up the trash that careless people leave behind.
“We were known as a green state,” she said. “What happened?”
