STEVE SMITH -- What’s Up

Admitting that Lyndon Johnson is one of my favorite presidents has

never gotten me anything but strange looks from both Democrats and

Republicans.

One of my fondest memories of the Johnson administration was not the

Vietnam War, the civil rights act or the war on poverty. It was the first

lady’s war on litter. In almost no time flat, the president’s wife, Lady

Bird Johnson, made public sloth seem to the rest of us to be a capital

offense.

The name of the campaign was Keep America Beautiful, and it was

thriving long before anyone heard of the organizations that sprouted

during the nation’s green years in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The

campaign headed by Lady Bird Johnson made a deep impression upon my

generation, most of whom still consider littering an unspeakable act.

Fortunately, most of us are passing our hatred of litter on to our

children, securing at least another generation of litter vigilantes. But

apparently Newport Beach has found that some people never got the benefit

of the Keep America Beautiful campaign because they’re just too young or

they’re old enough to have forgotten it.

Newport Beach has found out the hard way that litter is disgusting

and, unless it is controlled, it is costly too. So the city is

contemplating stamping into the sand a friendly message to visitors to

put their trash in a trash can on their way back to their cars. The

patented roller would be dragged behind the beach-cleaning machines that

scrub the shore each day.

I like this idea, mostly because it’s environmentally friendly and

it’s not a heavy-handed approach to the problem. But I still had some

questions, which the city’s general services manager, Dave Niederhaus,

was only too happy to answer.

Niederhaus says the amount of litter rises and falls with the amount

of education the public receives. So how did they find out about the

stamping device?

“We saw this company advertised in one of our trade magazines,” he

said. “They had never even thought of coming to the West Coast until we

invited them out here.”

So why not just put out more trash cans? That’s what they do at

Disneyland, where trash disposal is a science. Trash cans at the Magic

Kingdom are placed about every 20 feet, giving the potential litterbug no

excuse to drop trash on the ground. That strategy, plus a small army of

“sweepers” keeps the grounds spotless.

“Those trash cans have to be emptied by a really expensive person who

has just a really small [area] to move around out there,” Niederhaus

said. “I can’t go out before dawn -- I have to wait until everyone wakes

up along the beach, and then I have only about a two- or three-hour

window.”

To its credit, the city does not want to clean the beaches at night,

primarily for safety reasons.

“Many years ago, we actually backed over someone who had buried

themselves in the sand to sleep at night. So unlike Huntington Beach that

cleans their beaches at night, we just never wanted to incur that risk,”

Niederhaus said.

My other question was about the cost. Just how much is this

contraption?

According to Niederhaus, the city picks up and hauls about 10,000 tons

of trash per year at a cost of about $100,000. And although he had not

yet received a formal proposal from Support-A-Beach, the supplier of the

roller device, he estimated the annual cost to be $10,000 to $15,000.

According to a report submitted to the city, previous testing of the

sand stamper reduced litter by as much as 20%. But for things such as an

assault on litter, the bean counters have to close their books and

realize that there is a value to this campaign that cannot be quantified

on a ledger page.

The city’s beaches are under assault on two fronts. The water is

getting dirtier, and while I wish the city was even more aggressive than

they have been to find and punish upstream polluters, it is not easy to

find these criminals. But it is easier to get the slobs on land to police

themselves, and I applaud the city’s efforts to investigate by any means

possible to reduce beach litter.

And I thank Lady Bird Johnson for making an anti-trash fanatic out of

me 35 years ago.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and freelance writer. Readers

may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (949) 642-6086.