TYLERTOWN — Walthall County supervisors continued discussions on how to combat litter along roadways, but managed no real progress.
Sheriff Kyle Breland told the board Monday that none of his part-time officers were interested in serving as a litter enforcement officer, especially if they might be picking up garbage themselves.
Some had concerns that “if a drug user throws away a needle in the trash, they could get stuck,” Breland said. “That makes sense to me.”
He said an officer hired part-time to focus on litter control would probably have to attend a certification course, just like any other officer, if he or she was going to write tickets to offenders.
Breland said having prisoners work to clean roadsides might be of dubious value as well.
Marion County uses prisoners that way, and “they start at the Walthall County line, and they go all the way to Lamar County,” he said. “Then they start again and get just as much. And that’s just on state roads.”
Chancery Clerk Shannon Fortinberry said she believes an anti-littering campaign involving schoolchildren working on projects and educational items in the local newspaper would have an impact.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” she said.
Board President Larry Montgomery said that might not help, either, based on a constituent he encountered picking up some trash along the road.
The man said the county should put up “No Littering” signs, and Montgomery said, “Like that?” pointing out such signs that he said hang on the post below every stop sign in District 1.
“He said he’d never seen that,” Montgomery said.
Supervisors Ken Craft and Lloyd Bullock said residents and church members near Oak Grove and Brandon Bay churches had gathered many bags of trash from along the nearby roads in the past month, with Bullock saying Oak Grove people had collected more than 60 bags one weekend, only to have many bags more just a week or two afterward.
After the Brandon Bay cleanup, “you can ride out there now, and you wouldn’t even know (they did) it,” Craft said.
Breland said he would look into the possibility of hiring someone to be a litter enforcement officer, and Fortinberry said that might be a small deterrent, at least.
“There’s got to be someone out there who will do that job because they love this county,” she said.
