With litter strewn across a 10-mile stretch of Route 22, North Fayette Township says a solution is needed
There's an unsightly mess collecting along a road in North Fayette — so much that it looks more like a landfill.
Take a drive along Route 22 from Hankey Farms to the McDonald exit and you'll see garbage — a 10-mile stretch of it strewn across the berm. KDKA-TV found fast food cups and containers, full bags of garbage, an abandoned garbage pail — even a folding chair on the side of the road.
The garbage along this stretch is nothing new and has long been a thorn in the side of North Fayette. Route 22 is a state highway running through the township, which has little or no ability to address the problem.
"I've been involved in North Fayette 17 years and it's been talked about for most of those 17 years," township manager James Mangan said.
As a state road, the maintenance of it falls to PennDOT, which says it spends about $1 million a year cleaning up litter on its roads in Allegheny County alone.
"Our role is we go out and we clean it up as best we can in between our other responsibilities," said PennDOT's Lori Musto.
It's a labor-intensive process, requiring eight-member crews to pick up the garbage by hand. The department says its crews are stretched thin right now and have their hands full with plowing snow and fixing potholes. But when they become free, Route 22's cleanup will be a priority.
"We have a litter issue, I think, throughout the entire state, throughout the district, but that stretch does seem to have far more litter than we see in other places. Where it's coming from, we're not 100 percent sure," Musto said.
The township has a pretty good idea. Some of it is from people throwing trash out their car windows, but the stretch also leads to a Republic landfill in Imperial off the McDonald exit, and North Fayette says the lion's share of the garbage is falling from the daily parade of garbage trucks and private construction haulers on their way to the dump.
"There's garbage leaving these trucks as they're traveling at high speeds. Whether it's a tarp or better control of the garbage, I think that's the direction we're going to need," Mangan said.
When it comes to loose garbage falling from the trucks, violations carry heavy fines, but it's difficult to enforce, requiring patrols and stakeouts on the part of state police, who obviously have other, often more pressing, duties. The situation is one of frustration for North Fayette.
"We need to find a solution for it, is what we really need," Mangan said.
In response, PennDOT says it will be scheduling a cleanup in the next few days, and in a statement, Republic says it's willing to pitch in.
"As one of many businesses that access that road we are always willing to work in support of a highway cleanup where we can provide labor in conjunction with the local highway authority," Republic said.
But cleaning this and other state highways and keeping them clean is going to take a bigger commitment, both to more regular cleanup and greater enforcement of littering laws.
