Volunteers score litter across Rome, Floyd Co.
Volunteers from a crosssection of the community gave up their Monday to ride and score the amount of litter across Rome and Floyd County.
Keep Rome Floyd Beautiful Program Manager Emma Wells said the count will establish a new baseline from which the effectiveness of future anti-litter campaigns will be judged.
“If we do education in certain areas, hopefully we will be able to see that reflected in the amount of illegal dumping and litter and outside storage,” Wells said.
Georgia Burns, a volunteer with Keep Rome Floyd Beautiful for more than 20 years, said she wasn’t really surprised by the amount of litter that was witnessed Monday.
“I was pretty prepared for what we saw, but it’s always interesting to look around and see people are responding to some of the educational things we’ve done over the years,” Burns said.
Georgia Highland College Athletic Director David Mathis said he wasn’t so much taken with actual litter as he was with the amount of abandoned vehicles and outside storage areas that blighted a lot of homes and properties.
Ashley Ray with the Coosa River Basin Initiative said she was particularly interested to see how much litter might actually impact the waterways across the community.
“We went by one area that had a natural fed spring and there was not as much litter around that area but the next site we saw did have some,” Ray said.
“When people choose to throw that trash out, abandon those boxes, that TV or microwave, I don’t think they think about the impact it is having on our streams and our wildlife and the contaminants that are going into our soil,” said volunteer Pam Peters.