ROCKINGHAM — Several students representing the Beta Club and Environmental Club at Richmond Senior High School spent part of Tuesday afternoon cleaning.
The five girls picked up garbage from both sides of a short section of Cartledge Creek Road near Pine Lane, including the edge of an old junk yard, as part of a beautification project and wound up filling five bags.
Another part of the project will involve planting flowers along the road.
Littering has been a problem in Richmond County for years and Public Works Director Jerry Austin said it has increased in the past few months.
According to the monthly solid waste report, efforts from the county and N.C. Department of Transportation netted 4.2 tons of roadside trash in 332 bags during February. There were also four tires removed and one illegal dumpsite investigated.
Specifics on locations and frequency were not available as in months past. However, the most problematic areas are usually south of Mill Road in the East Rockingham area, and Wiregrass Road between Rockingham and Hamlet.
As the RO recently reported, county employees picked up more than 9 tons of garbage from roadsides in January — nearly 1/6th of the total 63.65 tons cleared in all of 2022.
Click here to read that story.
In just the first two months of 2023, the total tonnage of 13.86 is nearly 22% of the 12 months combined from 2022.
County Manager Bryan Land welcomes the assistance and encourages other residents to pitch in.
“Any other outside organizations that would be willing to help, we’re always open to those,” he said, adding they should contact Austin or Assistant Public Works Director Bryan Leggett. “We’ll be glad to set them up, guide them, whatever we need to do to assign them a road, because there’s never enough help.”
Land said the Adopt-A-Highway program, through NCDOT, is “not as hot as it was at one time.”
“Years ago, churches were on board, Boy Scouts groups — it’s just not like it once was,” he said. “I wish it was, but it’s not.”
But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been community efforts.
During the last week of April 2022, 213 volunteers — mostly from 19 groups — picked up 155 bags for a total 1,920 pounds of litter during the weeklong Spring Litter Sweep, which was held in conjunction with NCDOT.
For Earth Day the prior year, 39 groups filled 404 bags of litter weighing around 3.2 tons.
The county will again be participating in NCDOT’s Spring Litter Sweep April 17-22.
Richmond County’s industries have also helped keep roads clean.
American Woodmark has participated in the past several events and cleans up Freeman Mill Road, from Gin Mill Road to N.C. 38, quare through the Adopt-A-Highway program.
Around the same time as the 2021 Earth Day event, crews from Vulcan Materials cleaned up the Galestown Road area, collecting nearly a ton of debris, which included multiple tires.
In February of 2021, a clean-up in Cordova by employees from von Drehle resulted in three pickup truck loads of litter, all gathered from a half-mile stretch.
Click here to read about the von Drehle clean-up.
“It’s a problem and we realize that,” Land said. “I wish I had a magic wand to solve it.”
