Editor, Gazette-Journal:

A colleague on the Gloucester Clean Community Committee (GCCC) recently related a story to me. She was cleaning a messy swale alongside a county road when a nearby resident came out of his house and asked what she was doing. She explained that the GCCC is a group of volunteers who organize and participate in county roadside litter and trash removal projects. His response was, "The county should be doing this." I was glad, for her sake, that she didn’t fire back: "No sir, you should be doing this. This is your swale, your road, and your county." So I thought I would do it for her in this letter.

The south end of T.C. Walker Road, and parts of Enos Road, could be mistaken for dump sites. Burleigh Road, from Route 17 to Belroi, is one continuous stretch of refuse. The median and roadsides along much of Routes 14 and 17, as well as Hickory Fork Road from Belroi to Route 17, are littered with trash and trash bags. Beer and soft drink bottles and cans, cups and bags from fast-food establishments, and other assorted trash, litter almost every road, street and highway in Gloucester County. To put it succinctly, much of our county looks disgusting.

The next GCCC project is the third annual Clean Gloucester Day. It will be held Saturday, March 9 from 8 a.m. to noon. Nearly 1,000 volunteers have picked up more than 42,000 pounds of trash in the past two years! We’re asking residents who are as tired of this sorry state as the members of the GCCC are to select a place to pick up litter—anywhere you see that particularly bothers you—and on March 9 get your family, friends, business and community members to participate in Clean Gloucester Day. Call Bill Bell (693-5370) or e-mail (wbell@gloucesterva.info) at the GCCC office. Sign up now so we can organize supplies and volunteers.

If the residents of Gloucester County don’t work to make our county cleaner and more attractive, it won’t get done and Gloucester County will be the worse for it. It is my hope that readers of this letter will realize that no one else is going to do it.

Buzz Perkins

Chair, GCCC

Gloucester, Va.