SEQUIM — Pat Clark gets what he calls a wild hair now and then, so he heads out for a walk on the shoulder.
And last Wednesday, he and four other wild-hairy types combed the shoulder of U.S. Highway 101 between River Road and the Dungeness River bridge just west of Sequim.
Inside of 90 minutes, they picked up a dismaying amount of litter, Clark reported: 18 plastic sacks of it, plus a whole billboard that wouldn’t fit in a bag.
Clark and his gang of four — Gayle Larson, Dennis Lefevre, Lorri Gilchrist and Bobbie Usselman — were doing the Adopt-a-Highway thing coordinated by the state Department of Transportation.
These days about a dozen volunteer crews clean litter off the state and U.S. highways between Queets in western Clallam County and Quilcene in East Jefferson County, said Bill Riley, acting superintendent in Transportation’s Port Angeles office.
“We have very good participation out here,” he added. “The folks do a great job.”
As the population has increased, so has the litter, Riley said, and much of it blows out of the back of pickups screaming down the highway.
Clark and his crew agree, saying they’ve hauled away many a load of garbage that should have been more carefully tied down or disposed of before those trucks hit the road.
Usselman, Sequim’s deputy city clerk when she’s not volunteering on the highway, said she once picked up litter with a construction company’s name on it — and phoned the company to let it know of its unwitting deposit.
Some 600 tons of litter come off Washington’s roads every year, according to Transportation’s Adopt-a-Highway Web page.
For information about joining one of the 1,400 volunteer groups that have adopted stretches of shoulder, visit the page at www.wsdot.wa.gov/operations/adoptahwy or phone 360-565-0680.
For each team, the Department of Transportation provides orange safety vests, hard hats, large plastic bags and a big sign that reads “volunteer litter crew.”
When a volunteer finds something that’s too heavy or smelly to deal with, Riley added, he or she lets Transportation know, and a staffer will go out to pick it up and haul it to the dump.
The adoptive crews have been faithful, said Riley.
Some go out weekly or twice a month, which is far more often than Transportation requires.
Adopt-a-Highway teams are asked to go out four times a year, with April being the sole mandatory month.
That’s the apt month, since Earth Day is April 22 and, Riley said, “it’s the start of the summer season.”
Usselman added that in Sequim, it’s a time to go out and spruce up the highway in time for the Irrigation Festival, which brings people to town for the Grand Parade on May 8.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
