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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Enough trash to suffocate a pretty day
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
He moved here in 1975 and opened up an office as a private arson investigator.
Insurance firms came calling. Business boomed. Donald F. Zwick practiced for 20 years.
I learn all this after we leave the Gwinnett Senior Center and hop on Ronald Reagan Parkway. It’s a gorgeous Wednesday. This is the Badie Tour. Better yet, a mystery tour. I know what the subject might be, but I still don’t know what it is exactly that Zwick wants to show me.
We park alongside a portion of Webb Ginn House Road in Snellville. I spot a sign for a “luxurious subdivision” with homes starting in the $400,000 range. Outside that manicured subdivision, along part of the public road that serves it, lay enough trash to suffocate a pretty day.
And that’s what Zwick wants to show me.
“This didn’t just blow off,” says Zwick, poking at a household garbage bag and its spilled contents.
“I’ve seen too many bags like this on Mondays for it to be something that just blows off vehicles.”
And that’s why Zwick of Lilburn called.
Atlanta’s got potholes. Well, Gwinnett’s got roadside trash, litter and in the case of Jimmy Carter Boulevard just this Monday, the wrecked remains of a car’s front grill.
Zwick isn’t the only one sick of trash.
When I speak to clubs and groups, Q&A time typically finds its way to the Dumpster. People wonder about their anecdotal assessments, wonder if Gwinnett — where about 20,000 households have no garbage pick-up service — is growing less clean and beautiful.
I went online to the county Web page looking for information about sanitation. Seems the county, along with Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful, wants to update the county’s solid waste management plan.
They’d like to hear from you, and have asked for resident input at upcoming community forums (go to www.gwinnettcounty.com for forum dates and locations). The forums deal more with how garbage is collected in the county, but litter and illegal dumping is part of the equation, said Connie Wiggins, director of Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful.
“I don’t think the county has become more trashy, based on the surveys we’ve been doing for 20 years,” she told me. “These community forums will be a great opportunity for people to come and share their opinions.”
Last year, Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful conducted a survey using a “litter index” compiled by the Keep America Beautiful organization. The index assesses and ranks, supposedly scientifically, the amount of a community’s litter.
On a scale of 1 to 4, Gwinnett came in at 1.6. We had litter, but we weren’t swimming in it. Just wading, perhaps.
To heck with the surveys. Trash seems omnipresent.
On Wednesday, litter-hunting was easy, not even a sport.
On Dickens Road, we spot a bag of household garbage in addition to several loose pieces of litter. (We took the bag of garbage with us). The intersection at U.S. Highway 29 and Ronald Reagan Parkway has hundreds of discarded cigarette butts along the curb on the Parkway side.
“It makes mad, angry and sad to see the way things have become,” Zwick told me.
“When you see an area that looks like this, it invites more trash.”
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
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