Columbus is a beautiful city with an uglification problem

“Citizens have gotten to the point they just don’t care about littering anymore. That’s why the city is looking trashier than it ever has.”

— Columbus Consolidated Government employee, to Ledger Inquirer editor Ben Wright

If there’s a single topic (outside the realm of politics, of course) that has dominated readers’ emails and voicemails to Ledger-Enquirer opinion forums, and with increasing frequency and intensity, it’s the trashiness of many parts of the city — and of the people responsible.

“Littering” is, in too many cases, an inadequate word. Some of what’s going on isn’t a matter of just tossing a few empty paper bags out of car windows, as inexcusable as that is. We’re talking about some pretty large-scale dumping.

In the latest installment of the Inquirer, Wright reported on a Jan. 11 session of Litter Enforcement Training at the Public Safety Center involving all three of the Consolidated Government’s law enforcement agencies, as well as other city officials. And one of the things they talked about was doing some basic forensic ID on the stuff people are dumping.

This isn’t a new concept, nor is it brain surgery. Here, a law has been in place since 2006 under which people can be cited if information identifying them can be found in illegally discarded waste. Law enforcement officers for years have been periodically sifting through “informal” dump sites and getting people’s names from discarded mail, old magazines, shipping containers and the like. Think about how many things people throw away — properly or otherwise — that can identify them.

One of the current problem areas, Wright reported, is the Follow Me walking trail, which isn’t even officially open but which already has bags of trash dumped along its route.

According to Keep Columbus Beautiful Executive Director Gloria Weston-Smart, the training session was held to “engage and encourage the officers to look at opportunities for them to issue citations.” That doesn’t sound like a bluff.

Good. Because this seems to be a blight just about everywhere in and around town. People throw trash out of their car windows. It blows out or falls off of pickup trucks. One resident, Weston-Smart said, had emailed all members of Columbus Council about the problem.

One of the more exasperating details in this story is the shortage of roadside crews made up of offenders ordered to do trash pickup as part of their community service: They’re getting doctors’ slips. As Weston-Smart wryly and rightly noted, if they can’t serve outside, they belong securely inside. Unfortunately, we don’t need the observations of law enforcement or concerned citizens or Keep Columbus Beautiful to tell us what we’re facing. The evidence is right before our eyes, and we don’t have to go looking for it.

Community-spirited people have spent countless hours and literally millions of dollars to beautify this city. The senseless ease with which so much of that effort can be negated is infuriating.

This story was originally published January 22, 2018 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Columbus is a beautiful city with an uglification problem."