By all accounts, picking up litter on the side of a road or a highway isn’t the sexiest of vocations, but hundreds of local volunteers donate their time to do just that every single year.
“All I can say is that a lot of people get hooked and end up really loving it,” said Julia Meyers, the SLO County Adopt-A-Road program manager. “People with a lot or a little money take the same amount of pride in maintaining their stretch of road—it’s wonderful.”
Meyers manages a countywide network of about 90 volunteer Adopt-A-Road groups which provide perhaps the best deal around—roughly 200 miles of county roads cleaned up for little to no cost.
Volunteer groups under various umbrellas—including companies, restaurants, schools, churches, and community associations—pay a one-time fee to the county (currently set at $72) for a permit to post their road sign, and are thereafter responsible for cleaning up their desired stretch of road, ranging from 2 miles to as large as they can manage, at least once every three months.
“There’s always the potential for new roads to be adopted,” Meyers said. “The benefit of picking up litter in SLO County is that there are lots of beautiful places to work.”
SLO County’s Adopt-A-Road program includes all non-numbered roads in unincorporated area, and is similar to the Roadway Enhancement Partnership Program (REPP) in Santa Barbara County. And, if you compare the miles covered between the two programs, SLO County is winning the litter-cleaning race.
Kurt Klucker, the road maintenance superintendent of Northern Santa Barbara County, said approximately 4 miles of roadway are adopted and cleaned up by five to seven volunteer groups. The Elks Club covers the largest chunk, with a section on Bradley Road and a section of Union Valley Parkway.
Klucker said the volunteers have adopted most of the good routes that can be safely worked on in the area, and that he has the largest number of REPP partnerships out of the three sections of the county.
Through REPP, groups can also do things like plant flowers or trees along roadways. The Old Town Orcutt Revitalization Association planted trees, installed benches, and erected a clock on Clark Avenue through the program and have a long-term permit to complete more beautification projects on the same stretch of road.
“I think it’s relatively successful considering it’s a volunteer effort,” Klucker said.
Individual cities often have their volunteer cleanup programs, and Caltrans’ larger Adopt-A-Highway program targets all numbered highways in the county.
Keli Kolaczyk, the Adopt-A-Highway coordinator for Caltrans’ District 5 (stretching from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara), said her program is a “no-brainer” in terms of the benefit it creates for such minimal cost.
“Having the road sign is important for some people, but the top reason for participating by far is that people genuinely want to clean up their local highways,” Kolaczyk said. “Once you have your name on a sign that large, the pressure is on to make sure the highway doesn’t look trashy.”
According to Caltrans statistics, the Southern Region of District 5—which includes SLO and Santa Barbara counties—has 199 adoptions, which encompasses litter removal, tree/shrub planting, and vegetation control.
Kolaczyk said that her program requires a minimum five-year commitment to an adoption, and volunteer groups must clean up their stretch of highway anywhere from multiple times a month (on busy stretches of Highway 101) to once every two months (for more rural, less-trafficked highways).
One such Caltrans volunteer is Arroyo Grande resident Fred Brebes, 70, who has been picking up litter with his wife on the same stretch of Highway 101 southbound near the Oak Park Road exit for 20 years.
“We mostly see cans and bottles, some plastic bags, cardboard, a few tires, papers, diapers, and car parts all along the highway,” Brebes told the Sun. “We take pleasure in keeping the county looking nice and helping our neighbors.”
Brebes, who also worked in various roles for Caltrans for 40 years before retiring recently, said he and his wife pick up about a cubic yard of litter once a month, meaning they’ve removed about 240 cubic yards of material since he’s adopted the highway segment.
“It’s just something I find worthwhile,” Brebes said. “We’ll all have a better-looking roadside if people volunteer, and so anybody who wants to accomplish that should help out.”
Paul and Mary Speidell, another local couple, even topped Brebes’ impressive volunteer record, as they cleaned up a stretch of Highway 46 West continuously between 1997 and 2011, earning Caltrans’ “Volunteers of the Year” honor upon their retirement in 2011.
“I have a lot of respect for the people who physically go out there and do the hard work,” Kolaczyk said. “We have exceptional volunteers.”
Both Caltrans and the county program provide free orange vests, trash bags, and volunteer training/orientation sessions so that cleaning up road segments is as easy as possible.
“There are quite a few people who don’t even want a sign and clean up their roads anyways,” Meyers said. “I would say it’s a mutually agreeable activity.”
Staff Writer Rhys Heyden writes for the Sun’s sister paper to the north. He can be reached at rheyden@newtimesslo.com. Managing Editor Camillia Lanham contributed to this article.
This article appears in Jan 8-15, 2015.