Down in the Dumps Over Trash, Newport Takes a Swipe at Litterbugs Near the Pier

Ordinarily on the morning after the Fourth of July, the area around Newport Pier could pass for an annex to the county dump.

But not this year. And Helen Beattie noticed the world of difference.

“Hardly any trash at all,” she remarked Tuesday morning with a shake of her head and a glance out the front door of her Pacific Shell Store, just yards from the base of the pier. “For after the Fourth, it’s really clean.”

But then, she added, the area has looked especially clean the past several weeks. “They empty the trash bins all the time now,” Beattie said.

In fact, the city isn’t just emptying the area’s trash bins more often. After years of enduring the thousands of litterers who flock to its streets and beaches, Newport Beach is finally saying, “Enough!”

Litter-Free Zones

With the cooperation and blessing of grateful merchants, the city has begun a full-tilt, summer-long assault on litter in McFadden Square, as the area around Newport Pier is known. Signs everywhere tell of a “litter-free zone, strictly enforced.” Newly hired employees sweep trash into long-handled dustpans. And patrolling police officers, who once only rebuked litterers, now write citations with city fines as high as $95. The result after about three weeks, almost everyone agrees, is a remarkably cleaner McFadden Square.

“Everyone I’ve talked to can’t believe how clean it looks down there,” said Greg Armstrong, the Police Department’s environmental services officer. “I’ve had comments from officer after officer who have said they’ve never seen that area look so clean.”

And a longtime McFadden Square merchant who asked not to be identified said: “The pier used to be so filthy, people wouldn’t go on it. Somebody got on them.”

That somebody was Jean Morris, a Corona del Mar resident and citizen member of the city’s Environmental Quality Affairs Committee. “I knew Newport Beach has a terrible litter problem, she said. “I live here.” Morris and fellow committee members persuaded the City Council in May to appropriate about $16,000 for the three-month anti-litter effort, which will be evaluated in the fall for possible expansion next year.

“The beach-goer,” said Ruthellyn Plummer, a Newport Beach councilwoman who enthusiastically supports the anti-litter effort, “enjoys our beaches, maybe buys a few fast-food items, and then it’s a free ride. You’d think they’d appreciate it and pick up after themselves.”

Newport Beach began its campaign last month by putting dozens of signs around the square warning that anti-litter laws were being strictly enforced. Merchants along the block, tired of trash being strewn in front of their stores, willingly placed the litter-warning signs in their windows.

Erica Weiss, personnel director of PJ’s Surfrider, put it this way: “You can’t have trash on your streets and expect people to take your business seriously.”

Easier to Throw Away Trash

The city also began filling the square with more waste cans and emptying them more often. In case they get especially full on weekends, a city employee is now on call to empty them. “The idea,” said Armstrong, the environmental services officer, “is that it should be easy for the average person to throw away his trash.”

Should the average person litter, however, the city has hired three employees whose sole mission is to patrol the square’s streets and sidewalks this summer and pick up after visitors.

The goal, according to Morris, is to create an area where “people might be less inclined to put their litter. Part of the charm of Disneyland is that it’s lovely and clean and you don’t want to litter.”

Between stints with his broom and dustpan, Andrew Arich, who patrols McFadden Square, said: “It’s really frustrating to be a peninsula local and clean up after those a half-hour away.” Local residents aren’t entirely blameless, he admitted, but they “are happy to see something being done to combat” the litter problem.

“Teen-agers can be more conspicuous than others,” he added. Adults try to be more discrete and “polite in their littering, which is kind of an oxymoron.”

As city officials see it, a powerful weapon in their anti-litter assault has been the Police Department’s increased willingness to ticket litterers in the square.

Still, Armstrong admitted that littering laws are by their nature hard to enforce because “people do not normally litter in front of a uniformed officer.”

Increase in Citations

Before the campaign, the department issued about 20 littering citations citywide each month. Armstrong said it is still too early to determine how many more tickets have been issued at McFadden Square, but Danny Reynolds, an officer who regularly patrols the area, said he personally has issued about three times as many as before the anti-litter effort.

Standing next to his patrol car and scanning the pier area, Reynolds stressed that he isn’t shy about citing litterers. Those “who come down here and act trashy, they’ll get their tickets,” he said.

That sits well with the merchants along McFadden Square, several of whom said it was common before the campaign for some store employees to casually toss empty boxes or full plastic garbage bags out their front doors.

Now a sense of pride of sorts has taken hold, according to Lillian Lewis, a 15-year employee at Henry’s Grocery, and the practice has stopped. Moreover, she noted, “the locals have stopped complaining about (the litter problem) and are now saying it’s better.”

Not just the locals have noticed the improvement, though. Many inlanders, like Rosie Stewart of Riverside, said the area looks tidier than in the past.

“I haven’t been down here in several years,” Stewart said, scanning the square and feeding quarters into a parking meter, “but it really looks a whole lot cleaner.”