THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503230142
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 223 lines
ON GREENWOOD DRIVE near the Interstate 264 interchange, plastic bags line the bushes, flapping in the wind.
A little farther up the interstate ramp, the latest addition to drink cans and paper cups line the road.
Sometimes there's a hot dog bun or a fast-food wrapper. This week, even a remnant of red Christmas garland.
And everywhere, thousands of cigarette butts tossed as if all the world were one big ashtray.
No doubt about it. Trash is ugly. It spells defeat and a lack of concern.
It makes a city with old and interesting neighborhoods look sad and abused.
And despite years of anti-litter slogans and community cleanups, it's still a problem.
Marilee Hawkins, the city's director of environmental services, doesn't think the problem is limited to Portsmouth. She sees it on the road to Nags Head and on the streets of nearby cities.
``I truly don't understand the mentality,'' she said. ``I don't think anybody picks anything up that drops anymore.
``You drive up to any intersection and look down and someone has emptied their ash tray and you think `What makes you think that's OK?' ''
Lt. Jack Benzie of the sheriff's office wonders the same thing.
Benzie heads up the Sheriff's Alternative Work Program, which allows two small crews of inmates to volunteer their time cleaning up and performing other services around the city.
Those inmates stay busy following the requests of city officials and civic organizations to tackle some of the worst problem spots. They learn first-hand the frustration of cleaning up behind people.
``A good example of it is Greenwood Drive,'' Benzie said. ``We'll do that through Fairwood Homes and drive through the next day and you can't tell we've been there.
``I think the people are getting worse about it,'' he said. ``They're so indifferent about it. Once it's thrown out of the window, they've gone past it and they don't care about it anymore.''
It's a far cry from the 1960s, an era when children grew up on anti-litter campaigns and Lady Bird Johnson was urging America to beautify its highways.
Families took road trips and saw more wildflowers and state trees than litter along the nation's highways.
Portsmouth was hardly left out of that push for beautification.
City Clerk Sheila Pittman can still see former Mayor Richard Davis giving his anti-litter speech at the foot of High Street:
Ladies and Gentleman, we may be poor, but we can still be clean.
He delivered that message to first-graders, and he delivered the same message to people 80 years old, Pittman said.
And he appointed citizens to a Clean Community Commission to lead an army of volunteers in his push for a clean, proud city. Just one week's worth of cleanup projects drew 1,000 volunteers.
Back then, the commission's year-round cleanups won the city first place in the nation for cities with a population of 100,000 to 500,000. There also were state awards.
One commission report in the late 1970s showed a 63 percent reduction in litter on Portsmouth's streets, vacant lots and business loading docks.
There were bus tours for volunteers who counted abandoned cars and took notes on codes violations and problem areas. Portsmouth even offered training to other communities trying to attack litter.
``I think one of the things Dick Davis thought . . . was Portsmouth needed to change its attitude,'' said Jim Noel, who was the last full-time coordinator of the Clean Community Commission.
``It goes back to perception is everything,'' said Noel, now director of industrial development for York County.
``You think about how in the movies they portray a neglected, deteriorated area, and you see trash blowing around.''
Davis wanted the city to look cleaner and feel better about itself, he said.
For a while, it did.
Initially, Noel worked in an office on High Street apart and somewhat independent from City Hall. As state funding and grants for cleanup programs decreased and the city began downsizing, Noel was moved to environmental services and his anti-litter program became just one part of his job.
Noel understands there was a need to reassess priorities.
But, he said, ``it got to the point I had so many other responsibilities (the Clean Community program) was really getting diffused.''
Today, the commission, which at one time boasted six committees - from community organizations to schools and businesses, no longer exists.
What's left of the Clean Community program comes under the Leisure Services Department and is just one of many responsibilities for Paul Forehand, administrative coordinator for the department director.
The city is still a part of Keep America Beautiful Inc. and the state's Department of Environmental Quality - the umbrella for local anti-litter and recycling programs. Forehand serves as a clearinghouse for information from those organizations.
He also looks for cleanup sites when contacted by Boy Scouts and other volunteer groups looking for a project.
The main difference, he said, is that a full-time coordinator was able to get out and look for specific ``hot spots'' and immediately call on appropriate agencies or neighborhood organizations to attack the problem.
Forehand does have two programs that are about to go on line that will help the city's cleanup efforts.
He is coordinating with the state highway department to set up adopt-a-spots around the exchanges to Midtown Tunnel. He also is developing an adopt-a-spot program that will allow organizations to pick a specific area to maintain on an ongoing basis.
That's something most garden clubs won't need to sign up for. Most have have been tending to areas for years.
About half a dozen members of the Green Pines Garden Club do regular litter pickups of High Street from the Churchland bridge to Coleman Nursery, Mary Westfall said.
But members are getting older and Westfall hopes others will pick up the torch.
A former litter control chairman of the Portsmouth Area Council of Garden Clubs, Westfall served four years as chairman of the Clean Community Commission.
``I think I saw a great difference when we first started with the Clean Community Commission,'' she said.
Neighborhood groups started beautifying their entrances, litter disappeared and recycling became popular.
``There are still those of us around that work on it,'' Westfall added. ``We've been working on it for years and years.''
Like Rita Cupit, a Merrifields Garden Club member who serves as the council's recycling, waste and litter control chairman.
Cupit had just returned from an annual council luncheon where awards were given out for such efforts. She ticked off some of this year's feats, including a recycling haul that ranged from 189,171 pounds of newspaper and 10,606 pounds of aluminum to 323 gallons of oil.
The 6,000 clothes hangers council members turned over to Wayside Cleaners resulted in a donation of five trees to be planted around the city.
While recycling is a natural litter control, Cupit's garden club constantly tries to stay on top of litter in their own neighborhood.
They plan a spring cleanup of heavily traveled Rivershore Road and they regularly remove litter from neighborhood entrances, which take an extra beating because of their proximity to several schools.
One thing that has helped, Cupit said, is an arrangement with the city to have portable dumpsters placed in the neighborhood twice a month.
``People have said they like that,'' she said. ``And it really helps the city also.''
Cupit is among that number of regular volunteers who knows the city can only do so much.
``If each little community would help clean up, there wouldn't be a big job for anyone,'' she said.
The good news, Hawkins said, is that many neighborhoods are accepting the call to be a part of the solution.
Park View, Port Norfolk and Brighton/Prentis Park are among those that regularly communicate with the city on codes enforcement.
Extra dumping containers and some manpower are a part of the support the city tries to give neighborhoods trying to orchestrate effective cleanups.
Codes enforcement sweeps just three to four weeks before the big cleanup is another way the city helps. That way problems such as inoperable cars and unpainted houses get addressed before the war on trash and litter.
``It's important for city agencies to work with neighborhoods to make their designated cleanup day an important event with a measurable difference,'' Hawkins said.
Port Norfolk took the city up on that extra boost last year and will do so again April 22.
Last year, the civic league had about 65 volunteers who, in some eight hours, collected approximately 225,000 pounds of everything from trash and tires to tree limbs and abandoned appliances.
They hope to have 100 volunteers this year, and the sheriff's department and city workers will help.
Park View Civic League hopes to see the same kind of success when it holds its neighborhood cleanup in May.
``We really get a big problem on the dead ends and cul-de-sac areas, just because that's where people congregate,'' said Carleen Smith, president of the league.
Smith hasn't lived in Portsmouth long enough to know if the litter problem is worse than it was in the heyday of the Clean Community Commission.
But she knows it's a far cry from the rural Wisconsin community where she grew up - a place where ``peer pressure'' meant keeping one's property as nice as the one next to it.
``Some places I notice the most are on the route I drive to work,'' she said. ``The Downtown Tunnel - it's always a mess around there and it really looks bad coming into the city. Bottle and debris all around. It just looks trashy.''
Smith notices it most where the railroad tracks are, something Hawkins hopes to see improve with a partnership the city is trying to arrange with C&S Railroad.
The tracks, which run throughout the city, are a natural walkway and ``trashway,'' Hawkins said.
But even away from the tracks Smith sees plenty to pick up in her own neighborhood, and no sign that parents are teaching their children the same anti-litter lessons she learned as a child.
``The kids litter an awful lot,'' she said. ``I really don't understand.
``I usually go around and say `Pick it up' and they usually pick it up,'' she said. ``I tell them `If you make your neighborhood trashy, you're going to live in a trashy neighborhood.' ''
But she knows it isn't just the children.
``I have told teenagers; I even told a grown man who finished a bag of chips,'' she said. ``I said `I think you dropped something.' He turned around and he picked it up.''
But usually it's Smith who performs the daily ritual of removing candy wrappers, chip bags and quart beer bottles from her yard. She concedes it sometimes seems a losing battle.
``I think sometimes people get so tired of that, they get overwhelmed by it and they don't see any way to deal with it,'' she said. ``I think there can be a feeling of hopelessness.''
That's a feeling Smith doesn't think a community can afford.
``I truly believe if you allow yourself to live in trash you will accept that as normal,'' she said. ``My feeling is you have to keep fighting it.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
ON THE COVER
TALKING TRASH
Staff photographer Mark Mitchell captured the littered Greenwood
Drive scene near the Interstate 264 interchange.
Staff photos by MARK MITCHELL
``I truly believe if you allow yourself to live in trash you will
accept that as normal,'' says Carleen Smith, president of Park View
Civic League.
A work crew from the sheriff's department cleans an area at the end
of Columbus Avenue that has become a dumping ground.
Ripped plastic trash bags spew garbage at the corner of Bay Street
and Riverview Avenue.
Windblown litter has collected around the Interstate 264 interchange
at Greenwood Drive.
by CNB