Keep the Palouse picture perfect

Idaho has a slogan to encourage highway cleanliness: Idaho is too great to litter. It may be time for Whitman County to start up its own campaign because the picture-perfect Palouse isn't so pretty when its decorated in empty beer cans and broken bottles.

Sunday was Earth Day. Thirty-five volunteers from Endicott spent three hours cleaning up along the roadside on the seven-mile stretch between Endicott and Winona. Many of the volunteers were amazed at the number of trash bags needed for this one section of lightly-used county road. The garbage filled four pick-up truck beds which was distributed to any citizen's garbage can that had room to spare.

Four truck loads from just seven miles. The volume of beer and pop cans was bad enough, but the cans that had been used as tobacco spit cans before being thrown out were absolutely gross. And they were being collected by children as young as five years old.

There really is no reason why so much litter should be accumulating along the shoulders of our county roads. Rather than go off on a tirade about how irresponsible, lazy and sloppy some people are, let's be proactive and come up with a slogan to nicely ask people to dispose of their garbage properly:

Photographer haven; don't trash the picture.

We've got enough problems, don't trash us.

Trash cans located at every gas station; none along road side.

Would you throw that on your mother's lawn?

Wheat country; we don't grow garbage.

Please don't pollute our picture-perfect Palouse.

Or maybe we could just plagiarize from our neighbor because that really says it best:

Whitman County is too great to litter.

Jana Mathia

Gazette Staff