VOLUNTEERISM WATCH : ROADSIDE MANNERS

California’s year-old “Adopt-a-Highway” program can’t keep the state’s highways clean of the 4.4 billion pieces of trash--about 162 per person--thrown out of vehicles each year.

But it saves the state about $2 million a year in cleanup costs and results in something even more important: a renewal of civic pride.

Texas was the first state to create a program in which individuals or groups took responsibility for two years for tidying a stretch of highway, usually about two miles. now there are 40 states that have similar programs.

In California, the groups range from local Rotary clubs to a UC Irvine fraternity and employees of MacDonald’s. There’s even an entrepreneur in Orange County who, for a fee, provides paid workers to groups that want to adopt but don’t want to pick up the trash themselves.

Most groups, however, send their own members out at least four times a year to their adopted highway. Caltrans gives them safety training and provides them with the familiar orange vests worn by state cleanup crews. In return, the groups get a 4-by-7-foot sign posted on “their” highway that tells passing motorists of their good deeds.

Caltrans says the volunteer crews--there are 88 in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, about 90 in the San Diego/Imperial/Riverside counties area and about 20 in Orange County--supply the equivalent of 100 full-time state workers.

But the real contribution is making more people aware that our highways are for driving, not dumping.