Highway workers lament increase of human waste
Shouldn't this be self-evident??
That's the great thing about the outdoors- it's just one big toilet.
- Jeff Goldblum, "The Big Chill"
Once upon a time, back when people actually cared about what impact their actions had upon others, they used restrooms. Now, it seems to be wherever, whenever, and however the urge happens to strike.
KENNEWICK -- Forced to clean up an increasing number of jugs and bags of human waste along highways, the Adams County Waste Reduction & Recycling office took out a full-page newspaper advertisement to combat the problem....
From March 4 to Nov. 27, 2002, one Adams County highway cleanup crew picked up 2,666 jugs of urine and 67 bags with human excrement in them.
The problem isn't limited to Adams County.
Megan Warfield, litter program coordinator for the state Department of Ecology, had posters printed that are similar to the newspaper ad and made them available for any county that wanted them. About a dozen counties have ordered copies to deal with the problem, she said....Karen Cagle, who supervises highway cleanup crews in Eastern Washington, had never heard of urine jugs when she started her job in 1989. Now the numbers grow each year.
"Several years ago, we started finding them and didn't know what to do with them and left them. But you can't leave it there or the freeways would be (flooded)," she said. "It's incredible what's out there. Where is it going to stop?"
Just when I'd begun to think that I'd heard just about every stupid human trick imaginable, someone manages to come up with something I've never heard before. Unbelievable....
