John Flores: Cleaning up litter, one LITRBUG at a time

In a press release issued by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries on Feb. 21, Anthony Hills, 35, was cited for gross littering. Hills, who worked for a contracted disposal company, discarded storm debris from St. John Parish and got rid of it in St. Charles Parish near the Bonnet Carré Spillway.
I reached out to LDWF Enforcement Agent Sergeant Scott Dupre, and asked him how big of a problem litter is for the department.
Dupre, who patrols St. Mary Parish, said, “A lot of people don’t realize, but the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement Division is the No. 1 litter agency in the state. We actually write more litter citations than any other law enforcement in the state, but it’s a huge problem.
“It doesn’t matter where you go,” Dupre continued, “you’re going to see litter in every ditch, at every stop sign, and every intersection. It doesn’t matter if you look out your vehicle window or you’re in a boat. You’re going to see some type of litter somewhere.”
According to Dupre, there are three levels of litter infractions where citizens could be cited. The first is simple litter.
Simple litter could be when a hunter goes out to his lease and empties a sack of corn into his deer feeder and tosses the empty sack into the bed of his truck. Suddenly, while driving down the highway the sack flies out of the bed. Dupre explained, though not done intentionally, you’re now in violation of simple littering.
A second level of littering is intentional littering. Dupre says this form of littering is when people actually roll down the window of their vehicle or while running in a boat and throw trash out onto the road or waterway.
Dupre said, “You’d be surprised how many times we write people up for littering when they do it right in front of us. We’ll stop them for a routine boating safety inspection and they’re smoking a cigarette. They’ll flick that cigarette into the water to free up their hands to hand us whatever we need and, we’re like, ‘buddy — you just cost yourself a lot of money.’”
Dupre says the person usually is dismayed wondering what they had done. Unfortunately, cigarette butts are litter in the state of Louisiana and around the country.
On the “Keep America Beautiful” website, under litter research facts and statistics, it estimates nearly 50 billion pieces of litter are strewn along roads and waterways annually that equates to 152 items per U.S. resident.
Other points the website makes is there are more than 2,000 pieces of litter per mile (both roadway and waterway). There is slightly more litter along waterways (25.9B) than roadways (23.7B) and the most littered item remains cigarette butts.
“So many people could have had a good boating safety check, where they didn’t have any violations.
"But because of that cigarette butt they threw overboard, they’re getting tickets,” said Dupre.
The third level of littering is gross littering. Examples of gross littering would include appliances, roofing materials, and furniture that are often dumped along roadways, woods, and agricultural fields.
It’s common to find gross littering on Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge right here in St. Mary Parish. What’s problematic with that is another 10-15 minutes down the road is the Harold J. Babe Landry Landfill in Berwick that is essentially free to the public.
One of the things the LDWF has done to help combat littering is implement a litter hotline.
Dupre said, “A lot of people don’t know that we have a 1-888-LITRBUG (548-7284) hotline that you can call.
It’s supported through a Keep Louisiana Beautiful grant and other different foundations. And we’re the agency that controls that site.
"When you contact that number to report littering it’s going to direct you to our department dispatch.”
Dupre, who is passionate about littering, says the department is always trying to emphasize, “if you bring it in, bring it out with you.”
What’s more, in most cases the trash you take out will use up less space than it took when you brought it in.
Dupre said, “If we can help clean up the place by getting the word out and stop one person from throwing trash out, it’s a win.”