Getting a handle on highway trash

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2001 | 9:37 a.m.

State highway officials will tell you that the white plastic bags dotting Interstate 15, the gateway into Las Vegas, floated from Republic Services garbage trucks.

The president of Republic Services tells another story, as does one developer and long-term resident of a small housing tract in Sloan, a township neighboring a Republic transfer station about 12 miles south of Las Vegas.

Sloan resident Ray Roark says he sees less trash today than before the Sloan transfer station opened last March. And Republic President Steve Kalish says his trucks are not the only ones hauling trash. "If anything, it's better than it was," said Roark, who built and has lived on a 27-lot home development downwind of the transfer station since 1984. "Occasionally we get a lot of garbage blown under the freeway, but I don't see as much as I used to lying around."

Regardless of who is to blame, a significant amount of trash lines both sides of the freeway despite 24-hour street sweeping efforts by state highway crews and twice-monthly sweeps by a private California firm, Adopt A Highway Maintenance Corp. It's one of the first impressions of Las Vegas for the roughly 5 million California tourists who drive here each year.

Bob McKenzie, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Transportation, says he has been appalled to see the proliferation of a new, unofficial state flower -- the white plastic grocery bag.

Those undesirable blooms can easily be seen floating from branches of the state's official flower -- sagebrush.

It was this type of trash that teenagers, as part of a county work program for juvenile offenders, were picking up on March 19, 2000, when Jessica Williams drove her van off the road and into the group, killing six of them. Williams was sentenced to 14 to 48 years in prison after being found guilty of driving with drugs in her system. The families of the six victims have settled a civil lawsuit they filed against Clark County and Republic Services.

As a result of the tragedy, the county stopped using juvenile offenders to clean up highway trash. The litter continues to be a problem and sends a bad message, McKenzie said.

"When you invite someone to your house, you clean up before they come over. But regardless of how many people we put out there, we can't keep up with it," he said.

State highway Trooper Alan Davidson also points to Republic Services as a major contributor to the daily trash blooms. But he said police records are filed in a way that makes it difficult to determine how many $95 fines his patrol division issued this year to drivers who didn't secure their loads.

In November 2000 NDOT hired Adopt A Highway through a two-year trial contract to help state crews clean 114 miles of I-15 from the California border to just north of the Apex landfill. Apex is another perennial trouble spot, said McKenzie.

The company has contracts in 14 other states, most of which are on the East Coast. It pays its cleanup crews through donations of about $800 per month for a mile of highway. So far, it has signed up just 14 Nevada sponsors to defray costs.

So far, it's a losing proposition.

Still, since January Adopt A Highway crews picked up 5,473 bags of trash. Records show that 44 percent of the roadways closest to Sloan and to the Apex landfill account for 62 percent of the trash.

Pam Regan, a spokeswoman for Adopt A Highway, said that throughout the country trash concentrations tend to be heavier near landfills and transfer stations due to increased truck traffic.

But many trucks traveling to the three Republic transfer stations in the Las Vegas Valley are driven by non-Republic commercial trash haulers and by residents cleaning yards and garages. They, too, contribute to trash on state roadways.

Non-Republic commercial trash haulers may also play a larger role littering roads than suggested by McKenzie.

In a half-hour period Monday at the Apex landfill north of Las Vegas, 10 Republic Services trucks -- identifiable by their possum-bellied containers -- arrived at the site, all with screens buttoned over trash.

In that same period, 35 other haulers dumped trash. Of those, 11 trucks arrived without tarps secured over their loads.

Republic has franchises for 90 percent of the valley's residential and commercial trash, Kalish said, using 40 trucks on 10-hour shifts to haul the brunt of the valley's waste to Apex.

But the other 10 percent of haulers use smaller equipment, Kalish said, and usually take three runs to transport an equivalent amount of trash. Last year Republic buried 2.5 million tons of waste at Apex.

"I'm not telling you we're perfect, but we're doing everything we can to minimize the trash getting out," Kalish said. "And if you believe Bob McKenzie's comment -- that we're the only ones out there -- take a look at I-215. Take a look at the bus stops. Take a look at every freeway on-ramp.

"There's litter, and it's not from dumptrucks. It's careless people, and lazy people, cleaning out their ashtrays while they're waiting for the light to change."

McKenzie doesn't buy that argument. He said on Tuesday he followed a Republic truck. Although it was tarped, he still watched debris float free.

"What you're getting are air pockets in the tarps that force the plastic bags into the nearest opening, and they go to plug it up, but they end up flying out," he said. "That's why once you get north of Sloan, you get these blizzard conditions."