The amount of litter found along county roads in 2005 wasconsiderably more than in previous years, the board of supervisorslearned Monday.

“In summary, litter had increased over the last year by a littleover 19 percent,” said Homer Richardson, a committee member withKeep Lincoln County Beautiful, during the board’s regular meeting.”It was pretty obvious it had increased when we were doingevaluation. Every location was worse this year.”

Keep Lincoln County Beautiful has monitored 90 locations eachyear for the past seven years. There are 15 locations in eachcounty district and 15 locations in the city, Richardson said. Onlythe organization’s committee members know which locations aremonitored.

Each spot is evaluated and assigned a rating from one to fourbased on the amount of litter found, he said.

A rating of one or two is considered good. A rating of three,however, indicates potential problems, Richardson said.

“At that point, it really takes an effort to begin cleaning itup,” he said.

At level four, Richardson said, the site has become a definiteproblem area.

“We had several of them,” he said. “This is where it reallytakes a concerted effort by everyone involved to make adifference.”

The 2005 statistics bucked a county trend of steadily decreasinglitter amounts.

Since 2000, the county had been steadily been improving incontrolling its litter amounts, Richardson said. Two years in thattime, 2002 and 2004, showed an increase over the previous year, buthad recovered well by the next year to continue the decreasingtrend.

“We had been steadily improving overall, but this year was apretty good jump backwards,’ he said.

A contributing factor in the increase, Richardson said, was theloss of state inmates to assist supervisors with roadside cleanup.State inmates were removed from the Lincoln County Jail from Augustthrough October during an investigation of the facility by theMississippi Department of Corrections.

“I think part of this is a result of not having as many peopleout there doing the work,” Richardson said. “They had lessprisoners to assist the supervisors in clearing litter from theroads.”

State inmates began returning to the jail in a trickle duringlate October after several changes were made in the jail’soperations.

Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing, who was appointed inSeptember, said he has asked for fewer state inmates than inprevious years until he is comfortable with the new protocols.However, a schedule has been arranged with supervisors that shouldreturn the litter program to its former levels.

Richardson said the return of state inmates to the litterprogram would aid recovery efforts tremendously.

“I think if we have more frequent, organized cleanups it willhelp,” he said. “But the real problem is getting people to justunderstand not to litter.

“Most of the litter is stuff that could be easily held anddisposed of home,” he continued. “If we could just do that, youwould see a dramatic difference.”

A vast majority of the litter found by evaluators was fast-fooddebris and plastic drink bottles, Richardson said.

“We didn’t see nearly as many metal cans as we have in thepast,” he said. “As metal prices go up, people will collect them -but they don’t pick up the plastic bags and bottles or papertrash.”

More enforcement of litter laws would also help, he said.

Supervisors generally do a good job doing what they can to cleanup the litter, Richardson said, but there’s only so much they cando without the public’s support.

Not only do clean roads improve the safety to wildlife andappearance of the county, he said, but it should also be a matterof pride.

“This is what people see,” Richardson said. “And quite oftenthis is the image of the community that they will take away withthem. I would like that image to be a good one.”