State laments another roadside repulsion

Associated Press

SPOKANE — It’s spring, and crocuses and daffodils are beginning to push their colorful heads through the melting snow.

Along the medians and shoulders of highways and byways in Washington and other states, something else is beginning to emerge: hundreds of plastic bottles filled with urine, apparently discarded by drivers too busy to stop at roadside rest areas.

"It’s really getting yucky out there!" the Department of Ecology’s Gary Lambacher wrote in a recent e-mail to colleagues after a three-person crew collected more than 300 urine-filled bottles along I-90 and state highways near Spokane in a week.

Lambacher is Eastern Washington coordinator of the Department of Ecology Youth Corps, which hires teen-agers to clean up and recycle trash along highways during the summer. It’s not just urine; an adult crew recently found more than a dozen feces-contaminated pairs of underwear or bags of feces.

The so-called "trucker bottles" — from 12-ounce plastic soft drink size to gallon milk jugs — are turning up in highway medians, along roads and even at truck weigh stations, where the Washington State Patrol pays to supply portable toilets.

"Whoever it was, we had human waste left behind, not only in bottles but just there on the pavement," Capt. Fred Fakkema, commander of the State Patrol’s commercial vehicle division, said. "We have inspectors crawling around underneath trucks … all this has an effect on working conditions."

And penalties in Washington aren’t severe enough to discourage the practice, Ecology Department spokeswoman Meagan Warfield said. Even if a trooper sees someone tossing waste out the window, the offense is littering, which carries a $95 fine.

"It just counts as litter, like a cup of coffee," Warfield said.

A representative of the trucking industry in Washington said long-haul drivers may be getting a bum rap.

"This is the first I’ve heard of it," said Larry Pursley, executive vice president of the Washington Trucking Associations. "It’s hard for me to believe that truckers are doing that. A truck is not very conducive to that type of activity. The way they bounce around … it would not make it into the bottles."

Whatever the source, some volunteers involved in Washington state’s Adopt-a-Highway trash cleanup program have quit because they are so disgusted by the fact they are having to pick up those bottles, said Ray Willard of the state Department of Transportation in Olympia.

Several states have tried to cope with the problem.

Oregon in 1999 passed legislation imposing a $75 fine and creating a new offense of illegal disposal of human waste after highway crews found huge numbers of urine-filled plastic jugs, nicknamed "truckers lemonade," said Pat Cooney, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

"We think it’s a problem related to them not wanting to pay fees to use overnight truck stops, which are not anywhere near full," Cooney said. "The big problem is enforcement. You have to catch someone doing it."

It’s also an added expense, he said.

"We treat it as hazardous waste. They mark them, and hazardous materials guys handle the stuff," Cooney said. "It’s a significant cost to the state and taxpayers, not to mention the disgust."

In 1998, North Dakota briefly flirted with legislation that would impose a fine of up to $500 on anyone caught dumping human waste on the roadside after highway maintenance workers complained of being sprayed by exploding bottles caught in mower blades.

The legislation failed, so the Department of Transportation ended up installing splash guards on its roadside grass mowers.

Plastic containers containing human waste cannot be recycled and must be disposed of in landfills, said Rod Hankinson, who coordinated the Ecology Department trash pickup program in central Washington.

"Aside from avoiding rattlesnakes, baby diapers and pee bottles are the two nastiest things we face," Hankinson said. "Dead animals are not near as bad as a pile of baby diapers."

Although some freeway and highway rest areas have been closed in recent years because of budget cuts, the availability of a toilet doesn’t seem to make a difference, Lambacher and Warfield said.

"We see a lot at rest areas and weigh stations, places where there’s garbage cans and restrooms," Warfield said.

Lambacher said many of the bottles were found by his crew along Interstate 90 near Ritzville in Eastern Washington, near exits where there are rest areas or the town itself, where there are numerous public restrooms.

He and Warfield said it is not just truckers who are guilty.

"We assume that it’s truckers, but there is no study to back that up," Warfield said. "During a focus group last spring, I had a motorist admit that he did it, too."