Litter foe says government lacks will to enforce its laws

The Maui News
Tuesday, November 29, 2005

By EDWIN TANJI, City Editor

PUUNENE – There needs to be awareness, but there also needs to be consequences if the public is to respect laws that prohibit littering and dumping, said Maui County's top litter fighter, Jan Dapitan.

Dapitan, executive director of Community Work Day, said she is concerned that Hawaii no longer has the will to enforce laws against leaving messes on roadsides and public places.

She said the problem starts at the top, with a state government that has not made keeping the islands clean a priority. It hasn't always been that way, she said.

"In 1975, we were measured by a national organization, which found that we had reached a point of being 75 percent litter free," she said. "It was based on a concerted effort of providing information in the schools and through volunteer organizations.

"Then we had the Weepul campaign, and people enforcing laws. There were people enforcing the existing laws – the laws covering uncovered loads on trucks, laws on pollution of streams and for shoreline protection.

"There was an awareness, a consciousness that keeping our islands clean was happening," she said. "We saw that begin to erode after 1995 – 1995 was the year that the state stopped funding litter control."

Dapitan is a former Maui County parks director who evolved into the county's chief volunteer coordinator and organizer of community service programs. The programs became Community Work Day, a nonprofit organization that coordinates cleanup projects such as the Keep America Beautiful "Great American Cleanup" and the international "Get the Drift and Bag It" campaign.

When Maui suffered an outbreak of dengue fever in 2001 after residents who had been traveling fell ill and were bitten by mosquitoes that spread the disease, Community Work Day had a lead role in cleanup efforts aimed at eliminating mosquito-breeding sites.

The organization also managed a bulky appliance and furniture pickup project for Maui County, which ended after the funding for the contract was cut in 2002.

Dapitan said she is frustrated by the apparent lack of support for community cleanups, even as the state and county are facing increasing costs for dealing with littering and dumping.

"At the state level, there was in the Department of Health a litter control office, which was terminated in 1995. In the counties, there is no one charged with dealing with litter," she said. "I was just reading about the amount of money spent by the county and state governments on the aftermath of litter. It's millions. It's enormous.

"But there is nothing spent on prevention, nothing on education, nothing on changing public behavior, and no law enforcement organization is focusing on it as a priority or as an assignment," she said.

Dapitan has been advocating creation of an "environmental court," dedicated to dealing with offenders cited for littering or dumping, with high fines designated to a special fund to support environmental cleanup programs.

"We don't need new judges. We just have to educate a few to be environmental judges, who know the environmental laws and if there are fines, hopefully that revenue will go to the needs in the community for dealing with the problem," she said.

She said state Sen. J. Kalani English has introduced resolutions proposing an environmental court, but it has never gotten out of committee. But she will be pushing for such a measure in the 2006 legislative session, saying having courts mandated to enforce laws against trashing the landscape is important to the community.

"By having it, it becomes an educational tool and a deterrent to some of the violations," she said. "There are people who don't know what is a violation or who look around and see that they can get away with it."

There would also be greater incentive to enforce the laws, she said. Now, she said, county and state enforcement officers don't consider anti-litter enforcement to be a priority.

"The fact is, we are walking literally with trash bags scattered on our streets, seeing derelict vehicles stuffed with trash on the roadsides and seeing rats and vermin running in and out of them," she said.

The county needs to move faster on providing a place where junked cars and appliances can be handled, she added. The lack of a facility for handling junked cars, old appliances and other materials that shouldn't or can't go into the landfills is a factor in the growing number of illegal dumpsites, she said.

"The first thing is the government needs to give us a place where these things can be properly handled. Then we need to get it off the roads and take it to where it can be handled," she said.

Messes left on the roadside are affecting public attitudes, she said. Cleaning them up will reverse the feeling that it's all right to dump and vandalize, she said.

"If a child or young person sees there is actually consequences to defamation of property, maybe it will help them make better decisions," she said. "Let's do it because it's the right thing."

Edwin Tanji can be reached at editor@mauinews.com.

Copyright © 2005 The Maui News.

Original article URL: http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=14400

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