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Community Corner

Anti-Litter Committee Seeking Businesses to Adopt-a-Street

There's also a new focus on 'unintentional litter' that falls or blows out of poorly secured trash cans.

Shelton’s recent removed huge amounts of litter and refuse from city streets, but few businesses joined the many individuals, , neighborhoods and associations that volunteered.

The Anti-Litter Committee thinks the city’s business community can do better, so it is sending out invitations to Shelton’s 300 largest businesses to join its "Adopt-a-Street" program.

Participants will make a commitment to clean up a street or section of a street four times a year, said Shelton Conservation Agent Teresa Gallagher, who is processing the applications.

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"It’s got to be a street with a litter problem," she said.

The Anti-Litter Committee has targeted ten city thoroughfares that need ongoing attention the most. They include streets that are mostly lined with businesses or woods, which seem to be the ones with the worst litter problems.

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In addition, the committee has started a campaign to address a related problem: unintentional litter.

Gallagher said unintentional litter is trash that falls or blows out of poorly secured trash cans, and then nobody picks it up. She said up to 40 percent of the litter on Shelton’s streets got there this way, and it is especially noticeable on the day after a municipal refuse collection.

City ordinances require trash to be secured in trash bags and then held in 20-30 gallon trash cans.

People might not realize it, but they may face $250 fines for unintentional litter. (See public ordinances 559 and 755.)

"The people who litter intentionally is a small group of people. The people who litter unintentionally are a large group of people, and I think we need to reach those people," Gallagher said.

So when city officials identify a home where unintentional litter has occurred, the Anti-Litter Committee will send a letter detailing the owner’s or resident’s responsibility to clean it up.

As for Adopt-a-Street, Gallagher said the target locations include: Forest Parkway, Platt Road, Constitution Boulevard South, Constitution Boulevard North, Beard Sawmill Road, Farmill Crossing, Isinglass Road, East Village Road and Progress Drive.

"They just get filled with litter and nobody picks them up," she said.

Participating businesses will adopt a stretch of road and organize cleanup campaigns by their employees a minimum of four times a year. The city will come by and pick up the bags of trash they collect.

Leavenworth Road, Howe Avenue, River Road, Shelton Avenue, Nichols Avenue and Bridgeport Avenue won’t be included, because they are state highways and are cleaned up by the Department of Transportation.

Gallagher said it was disappointing that more businesses didn’t participate in the Clean Sweep during Earth Day week in April, especially since some of the worst-littered streets are the ones with the corporate office buildings.

The only Shelton businesses that participated in the Clean Sweep cleanup were TestAmerica, which has an environmental testing lab on Long Hill Avenue, Perkin Elmer, the medical equipment manufacturer on Bridgeport Avenue, and Salento Farm in White Hills.

"We had some scouts over on Progress and Research Drive picking those streets up. Why aren’t the corporations picking those streets up?" she said.

The Anti-Litter Committee isn’t sure what to do about Nells Rock Road. It is one of the worst littered city roads, because it is on numerous school bus routes and has almost no houses on one side.

Homeowners tend to clean up trash that others throw in front of their properties, so residential streets don’t tend to have litter problems.

Gallagher said the Anti-Litter Committee has no idea what the response will be from businesses, because nothing like this has ever been tried before. But she said the committee hopes it will clean up the litter problem on some of the city’s main roads.

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