Area groups swat litterbugs

“I’ve found things I wouldn’t want to mention, but we’ve found refrigerators, air conditioners, furniture, dressers,” Allred said. “People dump all kinds of stuff on the side of the road. Clearly some of it has been there for a long time. Other stuff might have just been dumped.” Cheap Christian Louboutin Shoes

Allred is part of a group that picks up litter the first Saturday of each month along the East Asheville road. The group is made of parents, staff and sometimes students at ArtSpace Charter School in Swannanoa, where Allred is a board member. The school has adopted a roughly 3-mile stretch of Azalea Road and is responsible for picking up litter from the soccer fields to Tunnel Road. Cheap Tiffanys

It’s also one of many volunteer groups that help keep North Carolina’s highways, roads and streets clean.

On the prevention side, less than half of those charged with littering last year received convictions, leading some to call for tougher enforcement. link of london charm bracelets

Budget cuts hamper pickup

Last year, the N.C. Department of Transportation spent slightly more than $19 million removing 446,964 bags of litter from roads, according to a litter report from the Roadside Environmental Unit. That equals more than 8.7 million pounds of garbage.

State budget cuts, however, limited the number of temporary employees used by DOT to collect litter, including prison inmates, according to the report. In 2008, slightly more than 14.8 million pounds of litter was removed from the state’s roadsides. In 2007, the total exceeded 10 million pounds. True Religion purses

“If we weren’t out there picking it up all the time, I think we would be buried in it,” said Susan Roderick, executive director of Asheville Greenworks, the local affiliate group of Keep America Beautiful.

“It’s a lot better than it used to be,” she said. “When I moved here in 1975, there were whole cars in the Swannanoa River. People would push their dead cars in the river and all you would see is the back of the car sticking up, or the hood.