Sunday, February 5, 2012

Clayton Potts commutes from Norwich to Wichita every day for work. He says he's tired of seeing the scenery along Kansas Highway 42 spotted with trash.

“It just made me sick, it's like the whole place is a landfill,” Clayton Potts said.

Potts says the pieces of plastic and other garbage fly out of trucks on their way to the nearby landfill.

“The back of the netting will pull up and the wind will hold it up and it will just blow out of the truck out of the top,” Potts said.

Potts says most of the trash gets caught up in fences and trees along the highway. He's afraid that's just the beginning of the problem.

“If that much is on the fences that's probably a small percentage of what's in the land and in the creeks and affecting the animals,” Potts said.

Potts isn't the only one who has picked up on the problem, Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Ryan Tauer says trash trucks in general have a hard time keeping all the loose papers and plastics tied down. He says K-42 is one of the worst areas he sees.

“There is a company that transfers trash from the dump in Wichita down south and they take K-42 quite often and we run into that quite a bit of trucks losing debris on the side of the road,” Tauer said.

Tauer says by law, all vehicles must have their loads secured or the drivers could face a $100 fine. To avoid paying up for trash falling out, Tauer offers a small piece of advice.

“Just take the extra time to put a tarp on it and keep it in your vehicle,” Tauer said.

Potts says he would like the truck companies to take that advice one step further in order to prevent trash from littering Kansas highways.

“Hopefully they can be responsible and pick it up and come up with a different method of holding it in their truck because the method they have doesn't work."