The Clean County Commission recently conducted its first Community Appearance Index, an activity conducted by all Keep America Beautiful affiliates annually. The purpose of the Community Appearance Index is to provide a baseline assessment of litter in James City County to compare with future index information so that the Clean County Commission can evaluate educational efforts and determine of there has been any improvements in litter prevention. The commission members divided the County into five watersheds and chose specific sites to visit and rate using a four point scale, with 1 being “minimal to no litter” and 4 being “extremely littered.” The roadways selected provided an accurate representation of land use types throughout the county including residential, rural/open space, commercial, industrial and government-owned. The scores were averaged to give James City County an overall score for the litter index of 1.65, which tells us that the County is “slightly littered” and we have work to do if we want to approach a zero tolerance for litter.
Other news on behalf of the Clean County Commission is the approval of two new Adopt-A-Spot locations. One will be located along Fieldstone Parkway in the Stonehouse development sponsored by Preservation Stonehouse at Toano and the other will be the Warhill Sports Complex detention pond sponsored by the Warhill High School Cheerleading Program.
And finally, the Commission has come across several citizens who take it upon themselves to clean up our roadways and we’d like to thank them. Pastor Thomas McCormick was found picking up litter along Pocahontas Trail and Pat Wilson was found picking up litter along Barnes Road and surrounding areas. Thank you for your selfless acts of kindness. Now if we could just prevent the litter from ending up on our roadways in the first place!
The Clean County Commission will meet with other community representatives on Thursday, Jan. 5 for an information gathering process to identify current community practices, regulations and resources related to litter prevention, beautification and waste reduction/recycling. Citizens with an interest in these areas or information that may be useful to our research are encouraged to contact the Environmental Coordinator at litter@jamescitycountyva.gov or call 757-259-5375.