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Keeping roadways clean is a full time job
Hundreds of pounds of trash litter county
Friday, Oct. 23, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by DARWIN WEIGEL
Inmates from the Calvert County Detention Center pick up trash along Stafford Road Tuesday as part of the county's litter control program. The county started the program in 2006 and has had 150 inmates voluntarily participate.
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The Calvert County Department of Highway Maintenance picks up between 400 and 500 large bags of garbage collected from county roads each month, according to Mark Willis, Maintenance Bureau Chief.
And last January, more than 1,000 bags of trash were picked up on county roads, he said, adding that he wasn't sure why more trash is always found on roadways in January, but suspects excessive trash from Christmas could be the culprit.
"People are taken aback when they hear the number of bags," Willis said.
Then the department started weighing the trash, and Willis estimated that his department picks up between five and six tons of trash over a 12-month period. Imagine if all that trash was on the roadways at one time, he said.
Most of the trash picked up is cans and bottles and fast food debris, but they also pick up 20 to 30 discarded tires per month.
"A lot of it is also the small contractors," he said, citing that they pick up old shingles, 2x4 boards and construction site debris.
"Most citizens do not realize this," Willis said of the amount of trash collected on the roadways. "It definitely has spiked over the recent months."
Although the county has seen numerous foreclosed properties in the past several months, Willis did not want to attribute the increase of trash to foreclosures.
The department is charged with maintaining county roads — paving, patching potholes and maintaining clear and safe roads — but is also tasked with keeping the roadway right of way, which includes 8 feet on either side of the road, free of trash.
"It's hard to maintain the roads when dealing with this," Willis said.
The county came up with an idea to augment its constant job of cleaning Calvert roadways by recruiting inmates from the Calvert County Detention Center.
"Mr. [Milton] Crump and I started this a couple years ago," Willis said of the administrator of the Calvert County Detention Center. In the past, the county had to contract out picking up trash and this year the partnership with the detention center will save the county about $75,000, Willis estimated.
The inmates, who qualify for work release, will pick up trash on the roadways five days a week with a supervised detail, Crump said.
"Work details get special time, too," Crump said, explaining that the inmates are entitled to "industrial time" or a reduction of sentence for their work, but do not receive pay.
"If they can't get a job, it gives them a job," he said.
They clean up county roads while Route 4, a state road, is cleaned by inmates at the state Department of Corrections, Crump said.
The inmates will pick up "what you see between the road and the woods' edge," Willis said. However, if the trash is just beyond the edge, they don't walk past it.
Along with the inmates, people who need to fulfill court-ordered community service hours can do so by picking up trash, Willis said. And Willis's department also started a 1,000-hour apprenticeship program through the detention center, which will teach an inmate the technical aspects of the job of maintaining roadways.
"It gives me free labor and they learn something," Willis said. The department just had its first inmate complete the apprenticeship, he said.
It's hard to keep ahead of the trash on the main artery roads such as Cox and Plum Point roads, he said. "We'll do the same road five times a month," Willis said of the main arteries.
Citizens will also call the county's Department of Highway Maintenance and request they pick up trash discarded on the roads in front of their residence, Willis said. Recently they got a call about an entire living room set left in front of a yard next to the road, he said.
"You'd be surprised at what we find," he said.
Along with trash they also pick up road kill, and in the past year, Willis said crews have picked up 177 "10-45s," a designation for dead animals, wild or domestic.
Some people will clean up their own neighborhood or do it as an organization.
White Sands Civic Association puts on massive clean-ups a couple times a year and school groups and sport teams also volunteer to clean up roadways, he said.
Despite the efforts of many and a continual schedule of trash pick-up on roadways, trash can be seen on most roads around the county. "I'll always have job security as far as litter, and that's a shame," Willis said.
