Spring thaw signals time for road cleanup

Three major snowstorms during the past three weeks have kept snowplows and salt trucks out on the roads day and night throughout Delaware and the Cape Region.

Despite sub-zero wind chill and blinding snow at the height of the storms, Delaware Department of Transportation workers did an outstanding job keeping local roads safe for travel. Thank you, DelDOT, for a job well done.

But there is never any rest when it comes to Delaware’s roadways. As winter snow turns to spring rain, a new problem is surfacing: We can now see all the litter accumulating along our roads, especially Sussex County’s many backroads and byways.

County officials are aware of the problem or soon will be. County Administrator Todd Lawson plans to address the issue during the March 10 council meeting in Georgetown.

Plastic bags and fast-food containers dominate much of this trash, but a ride down many backroads in Sussex reveals sofas, appliances and garbage bags tossed into drainage ditches that line our roads. As the weather warms, the debris will be landscaped with high weeds and flagged with more bags and other trash.

It’s a perennial problem, one that demands a solution that goes beyond DelDOT’s popular Adopt-A-Highway program, which for 25 years has encouraged volunteers to clean up a 2-mile stretch of road at least three times a year. Some 800 groups statewide are helping to keep state roadways clean.

But more than a volunteer crew is needed to clean up the kind of dumping that will all too soon become apparent along the less-traveled roads of Sussex County.

Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has a toll-free environmental complaint hotline, at 800-662-8802, where residents can report bags of trash and other debris left along the road, and officials say DelDOT will pick up furniture on or near the roadway. This plan works only if citizens report dumping to the hotline and only if DNREC and DelDOT respond.

The best plan is for everyone to do their part to dispose of trash properly. When that fails, state and county officials must do their part to ensure all complaints are investigated and promptly cleaned up.