Garbage along roads in Palmetto state worsened greatly during the coronavirus pandemic, South Carolina’s top transportation official said.
The problem, she and other officials said, is not just an increase in food containers for meals or personal protective equipment, but the fact that the typical workforce that cleans up this waste has evaporated.
Speaking at a beach advocates conference on February 8, SC Department of Transportation secretary Christy Hall said the garbage problem has increased in part because more people are using drive-thru restaurants and disposing of containers inappropriately.
“We are seeing a garbage epidemic on all highways and we cannot keep up with it,” said Hall, who runs the country’s fourth largest state road system.
In an additional statement to The Post and Courier, Hall emphasized that trash is a monstrosity and that it causes other problems, such as clogged drains and a contaminated environment. SCDOT hired contractors to help clean up for the first time last year, paying $ 668,000 to collect more than 272 tons of garbage, and regular agency employees were also in charge of cleaning.
Sarah Lyles, executive director of Palmetto Pride, agrees that there is more garbage along the main roads and that more disposable masks and gloves have been stressing an “already overloaded” waste stream.
Palmetto Pride, a quasi-state agency, coordinates voluntary cleaning efforts and saw a drop in participation last spring, said Lyles. There were about 55,000 trash cleaning volunteers for the group in 2020. Typically, there are about 70,000 in an average year, she said.
Containers of drinks and other items are strewn across the grass next to Interstate 526 on February 11, 2021. Work teams of incarcerated people cleared more than 9,000 miles of interstate highways and 15,000 miles of general roads in 2019, but which worked out stops in 2020 with the coronavirus pandemic. Brad Nettles / Team
There are also problems in other parts of the cleaning efforts. Crews of people imprisoned in state and county prisons are not going out to collect garbage, as they have done in the past.
“We are losing a link in the work chain now,” said Lyles. “We love our state because we have low taxes, but it also means that certain programs are not funded, like garbage teams that clean all roads.”
SC Penitentiary Department spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said work teams, including garbage collection groups, were stopped last March, when the pandemic became a global concern. None of these programs has been resumed.
“I think a lot of people are now understanding how much of the highways we keep,” said Shain.
In 2019, about 220 incarcerated people helped clear more than 15,000 miles of roads, most of which were on interstates, Shain said. The workers on these teams receive credits for their work that can help shorten their sentences and work five days a week throughout the year, except during inclement weather.
However, there is good news in the world of volunteering. Lyles said that many people have returned to Palmetto’s Pride programs, activities that lend themselves to social detachment because they are already happening outside. About 500 people attended a cleanup in early February in the Francis Marion National Forest.
Talk to Chloe Johnson at 843-735-9985. Follow her on Twitter @_ChloeAJ.