Adopt-a-Highway – C-VILLE Weekly

In brief: Trashy people, rash of convictions, UVA’s warning and more

Spring cleaning

As the weather warms, more people are outside and noticing just how trashy our scenic highways are. That’s when local groups that have adopted a highway under the Virginia Department of Transportation don their orange blaze vests and go clean up after their filthy neighbors.

Groups that volunteer are asked to take care of a two-mile stretch of road at least two times a year. After two pickups, the group is eligible to put its name on a blue Adopt-a-Highway sign. VDOT supplies orange trash bags, vests and roll-up signs to warn vehicles a pickup is in process, and will come remove the bags.

Some adopters have been known to abandon their highway, and resident VDOT administrator Joel DeNunzio says if a group hasn’t picked up in a certain amount of time, it can lose its blue signage. “Certain groups may be more interested in having their names on highway signs,” he concedes.

Fortunately that’s the exception, and volunteers are welcome. “I will let anybody adopt any highway I think is safe,” says DeNunzio. “They’re only denied if I don’t think it’s safe. We don’t want to have inexperienced people or kids on dangerous roads.”

96 groups have adopted roads in Albemarle County
192 miles of road are adopted
189 bags of trash have been picked up by volunteers so far this year

Source VDOT

“If the administration remains loudly silent in the face of white supremacy, it will perpetuate the University’s painful and pervasive history of racial violence.”—Petition from UVA students to President Teresa Sullivan and the Board of Visitors April 27, the same day the university issued a no trespass warning to Jason Kessler.

Beating trial begins

The first of four jury trials in the August 12 malicious wounding of DeAndre Harris got underway April 30. It took six hours to seat a jury for Jacob Goodwin, 23, from Ward, Arkansas. Goodwin’s attorney, Elmer Woodard, admits Goodwin kicked Harris but says that didn’t cause the serious injuries Harris suffered.

Sex trafficker convicted

A trial originally scheduled for five days stretched nearly two weeks before a jury, after deliberating 15 hours, convicted Quincy Edwards, 34, of 10 counts of commercial sex trafficking and of procuring a person for financial gain. The Albemarle jury recommended 22 years in prison. Edwards was arrested in 2015 at the Royal Inn, and his victim said she had sex with as many as 20 men a day for her heroin supply.

Teacher pleads guilty

Popular former CHS environmental sciences teacher Richard Wellbeloved-Stone, 57, pleaded guilty to one count of production of child pornography April 26 in U.S. District Court. He came to law enforcement’s attention while chatting with an undercover agent in the U.K. and describing his fantasies about a prepubescent girl. Police found images of a girl’s vagina on Wellbeloved-Stone’s cell phone.

Garrett’s mandatory minimums

Congressmen Tom Garrett, Jared Polis (D-CO) and Ken Buck (R-CO) introduced the Review Every Act Diligently In Total—READ IT—resolution to amend House rules to establish a mandatory minimum review period for all legislation that is brought to a vote.

Warmbiers sue North Korea

The parents of UVA student Otto Warmbier, who was held in North Korea for 17 months before being returned to the U.S. last June in an unresponsive state, have sued the rogue nation for torturing their son as Kim Jong Un makes nice with South Korea and plans a meeting with President Donald Trump. Warmbier died shortly after his return.

Drugs and horses

Albemarle County Police had a busy April 28 running a drug take-back program at Sentara Martha Jefferson and policing 15,000 racegoers at Foxfield. The number of drugs collected was down from last year, but so were the traffic tickets at Foxfield. Collecting drugs or dealing with drunk UVA students—it’s one way to enjoy a beautiful spring day. Preliminary numbers for those events are:

Foxfield

Spring 2018

15,000 racegoers
5 arrests
31 medical emergencies, 12 known to be alcohol related
3 medical transports to ER
0 traffic tickets

Spring 2017

12,000-14,000 racegoers
5 arrests, including 1 DUI hit-and-run crash
38 medical emergencies
2 medical transports to ER
19 traffic tickets
1 ticket for marijuana possession

Drug take-back

Spring 2018

364 vehicles
25 bags collected
768 pounds of meds
428 pounds of needles

Spring 2017

413 vehicles
37 bags collected
1,084 pounds of meds
362 pounds of needles

Trash talk: Highway adopters say littering worse than ever

There’s a famous scene from “Mad Men” in which the Draper family goes on a picnic. Afterward, Don tosses his beer can on the ground and Betty shakes the tablecloth out and leaves the trash from their outing, a not uncommon occurrence in that era before Lady Bird Johnson joined the Keep America Beautiful campaign in 1965 and PSAs urged citizens to “please, please don’t be a litterbug.”

For a Crozet couple, it might be time to launch that campaign again.

Miette and George Michie estimate they’ve picked up more than a ton of trash over the past 18 years on the stretch of Miller School Road they adopted—and that’s not counting tires or large pieces of debris that don’t fit into trash bags. Yet they say more people than ever are using the road as their personal garbage can.

Miette Michie says the amount of litter on roads has worsened. Photo Jeffrey Gleason

“It’s just ridiculous,” says Miette Michie. “We cleaned up the road three weeks ago, picking up literally 12 bags, and it needs to be done again. Who are these people?”

And it’s not just rural roads. She’s taken photos of litter in the city, on the U.S. 29 Bypass and pretty much everywhere she drives. “I don’t think there is a 10-foot section of roadway anywhere in the area that is litter-free,” she says. “Disgusting.”

Michie has lodged complaints with Charlottesville and Albemarle officials, and she’d like to see more public awareness of just how trashy an area known for its natural beauty has become.

She points to a program in Albuquerque, whose mayor started paying panhandlers to pick up trash, and she thinks it’s an idea that could work here.

Charlottesville Public Works Director Paul Oberdorfer, in an email to Michie, says, “I agree there has been a notable increase in litter.” He says public works and parks & rec both work on litter control, and hire seasonal workers to help out.

Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail recently implemented two inmate programs that try to stem the tide of rising refuse. Last month, the Virginia Department of Transportation started funding a program for men to go out on weekends to pick up trash. Albemarle County pays for a similar program in which female inmates go out a couple of times a week to clear county roads, says Superintendent Martin Kumer.

The inmates pick up around two tons a week. “We weigh the trash,” says Kumer.

He calls the program a “win-win” for everyone. The agencies pay for one jail staffer to go out with a crew of up to five inmates. And the inmates themselves receive a credit of $7.25 an hour to go toward their court costs and fines.

Some areas have to be picked up more often, and Kumer says Route 20 at Piedmont Virginia Community College is one of the worst, and the U.S. 29 Bypass and Ivy Road are also “really bad.”

Virginia’s volunteer pick-up program, Adopt-a-Highway, started in 1988, and the VDOT website boasts that it’s “one of the largest programs in the country.”

However, it’s unclear how viable the program currently is. C-VILLE Weekly contacted VDOT for more than two weeks without any success in reaching anyone involved in the program.

For those who attempt to adopt a highway, they’re asked to be responsible for a two-mile stretch and pick up trash at least two times a year for three years. VDOT supplies safety vests and orange trash bags. After two documented pickups, volunteers can get an Adopt-a-Highway sign with their names on it, according to the VDOT website.

“I don’t know how effective the VDOT program is,” says Michie. “We’ve never gotten a renewal in 18 years.”

Most volunteers get some satisfaction for their efforts, but picking up roadside trash isn’t necessarily one of them. “It’s the one thing that after you do it, you get more mad,” says Michie. “Other [volunteer activities] are uplifting.”

She concedes Miller School Road is on the way to the dump, but says the number of beer cans and bottles belie a few items flying off a vehicle on a dump run.

About the litterers, Michie is left wondering, “What is wrong with these people?”