"Dirty Old Town"

I know .... I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the lack of cleanliness of our area. In reality, the "dirty old town" image we project is one of the primary reasons we are not drawing new residents and businesses. Who wants to move to a "dirty old town"? NO surprises there then. Huntington fares very badly in a litter survey carried out by the West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection (WV DEP). While towns all over the country have made great gains, Huntington is classed as a litter black-spot.

Blame has been laid on the City of Huntington's administrators and the Huntington City Council, but I don’t think that is entirely fair because to me the people who walk along dropping litter as they go bear more responsibility. Can you blame a local authority for the uncaring citizens and visitors who trash our streets and highways? Certainly there is no doubt that our taxpayer-supported city, county and state governments have a responsibility to keep our streets and highways clean, but it’s an uphill and expensive job in Huntington and Cabell County and this is backed up by what I see everyday. The worst thing about this is that more money than is right is already being spent cleaning up after the lazy-litter-perpetrators I have already mentioned. Let us be clear about this, this is money that could be directed to the Huntington problems of controlling drugs and crime, up-grading the condition of our streets, curbs and gutters, etc. (I could go on-and-on with the major issues we must fix.) Simply stated, all it takes is for people to have some civic pride. However, that pride is lacking.

Should I expect people to have that pride? Not at all, but I do expect people to know that dropping the wrapper from their chips in the middle of a street and not in a litter receptacle, is wrong, unsightly and makes our communities a litter bug’s dream and an eyesore to live with. There have been a couple of occasions where I have picked up people’s discarded rubbish and went after them saying ‘oh, excuse me you dropped this! And in most cases I have been told to ‘f*ck off’. Charming indeed, but not nearly as charming as their compulsion to pollute our streets. When my son was small, NOT dropping litter was what I considered an important lesson and one that would later become the bane of my life when it was my turn on clothes washing days, he held litter in his pockets. Well that's the way it should be, because litter shames us all. One element of the solution is to have trash receptacles and cigarette butt disposal units on every corner of every street and the implementation of an advertising campaign that will use billboards and public service radio and TV-spots targeting the largest group of offenders (according to a national study) - 15-year-old to 35-year-old males. I'm doing extensive research on both solutions to determine the feasibility and projected cost. I'll keep you posted.