Parish anti-litter campaign may get enforcement boost

Keep Louisiana Beautiful was formed in the year 2000 as a nonprofit organization to assist the state in reducing litter.
Under the auspices of Keep America Beautiful, KLB took on the mission to “promote personal, corporate and community responsibility for a clean and beautiful Louisiana.”
Part of that initiative was to create local branches that would tackle litter across the state.
Keep St. Mary Beautiful was formed in 2006 and continues its efforts today.
Project Director Mayor Rodney Grogan of Patterson said there is a litter abatement component required by law that authorized community service as directed by the courts.
“We found that’s one of the missing components in St. Mary,” Grogan said. “So the district attorney sent James Fontenot to (an enforcement seminar).”
Grogan said community service has been ongoing in the judicial system, but litter abatement was not part of it. “They’re going to strengthen that,” he said. “They’re going to put that back.”
The mayor said enforcement has been lacking in some regards, but there’s a chance for parish governments to help. The Louisiana Aquatic Litter Alliance then went forth and produced the “Litter Ordinance Template” that could be adopted or adapted by any local government entity within Louisiana.
St. Tammany and Washington parishes have adopted the ordinance, “And it’s bringing in big money,” Grogan said. “It can actually fund the program and help the justice of the peaces and constables.”
Grogan said the parish can “buy into this ordinance that will allow the parish to host just a litter court. We’re looking at one on the east end and one on the west end. If we can get a justice of the peace and a constable, we can start the ball rolling.”
That would provide a boost to enforcement of littering laws, Grogan said, and citizens can report littering offenses that would proceed through the litter court if valid.
The KSMB initiative is closely related to local governments’ efforts to deal with blighted properties. As a mayor, Grogan said addressing those properties through the designated legal process is long and involved, but it pays off in the long run.
“We bring people to court in Patterson,” he said.
Grogan said because of KSMB, “It goes to show that our leaders are supporting the cause, but because of the dwindling economic cause” funding issues are prevalent.
KSMB Chairperson Didi Battle said the project is “better, things were kind of slow in the beginning. In Franklin though, we’ve been cleaning up well before Keep St. Mary Beautiful. We were ready. When we first started each municipality had to support this financially and that part really didn’t go over well, because they just can’t afford to. So we made adjustments. People are more aware of it, and I think people are beginning to think it’s not beneath them to come and help out.”
Grogan said certain areas are considered “bad areas, they’re not clean” but he toured those areas and found different circumstances. He said some areas may mostly be suffering more from blighted properties than an abundance of litter. “If you look at St. Mary Parish and ask if we have made improvements, I think we have,” he said.
“A lot of people still think that it’s government’s job to take care of litter,” Battle said. “But if they just stop to think about that, there’s no way government can hire enough people to care of it. There’s one place we went, under the bridge on the way to Cypremort Point, that’s very bad. It’s a garbage disposal area, and we have to address that.”
“We even found that if you have two or three acres of land full of trees, and you want to cut down all those trees and not haul a thing away, there’s no enforcement,” Grogan said. “Because you didn’t bring it there.”
At a recent seminar, Battle said the sheriff of Terrebonne Parish noted that his inmates pick up litter among other projects. In St. Tammany there is a similar system.
Grogan said inmate work release programs help sheriff’s pay for rising incarceration costs, rather than sending inmate crews to other efforts.
At KSMB’s annual meeting in September, Battle said there will be a presentation on how to set up the litter court. “That should be really helpful, and we’ve been collecting information for some time now,” Battle said.
There’ll also be a presentation on plastic shopping bag litter, a large problem in most areas, including Patterson, Grogan said.
“But if you start reducing the number of bags…that’s one that I’m really going to listen to,” he said.
Battle said members of St. Mary Landmarks have helped clean City Park in Franklin for years. She said once she picked up all the litter in the children’s area, and put it in a garbage can without a lid. She returned later and the litter was back on the ground. Turns out “the neighborhood crow had decided he was hungry and pulled all this stuff out. So animals, if you leave that stuff out there, will get to it.”
KSMB has been visiting schools, mostly fourth graders, who seem to be the most receptive to the concept, Grogan said.
“I’ve had some people tell me that they’ve come to one of the Franklin cleanups and they said it was fun,” Battle said. “They wanted to know when the next one would be.”