May the Road Rise With Volunteers Who Adopt a California Highway

This summer, as more Americans hit the road for vacation, it seems appropriate to think about the scenic byways they’ll be taking, like the Pacific Coast Highway in Big Sur and U.S. Highway 395 below the eastern flank of the High Sierra. To my mind, they aren’t just roads through the state; they are routes to the heart.

So it appalls me to think of people who despoil them by throwing cigarette butts, beer cans and hamburger wrappers out the window. Plenty of Californians are doing something about it by participating in the Adopt-a-Highway program. It lets individuals, groups and businesses contract with the state to maintain a stretch of highway, typically two miles long, for two years. This chiefly involves removing litter, saving taxpayers about $5 million, program administrators say. The state provides trash bags and safety training for participants, and “adoptive parents” are recognized by a sign on their stretch of road.

Jan Davidson of Fish Camp, Calif., just south of Yosemite National Park, adopted a part of California Highway 41 near Fresno in 1999. “I had no idea what a job it would be,” says Davidson, who once suffered heatstroke while gathering trash on the roadside.

The first time she and her husband, Don, visited their assigned area, they each collected 101 bags of litter in 28 1/2 hours. After that, there were just 15 to 20 bags of litter to collect six times a year. Davidson also works with the House Rabbit Society, which finds foster parents for abandoned bunnies, especially after Easter. She got involved in the Adopt-a-Highway program when she realized it could help her promote rabbit rescue.

The sign on the stretch of Highway 41 in Fish Camp she maintains says its adopter is the South Yosemite Chapter of the House Rabbit Society. Since it went up, Davidson says she has received lots of calls about the organization. One Easter she did a cleanup wearing rabbit ears. A car stopped, and the children inside yelled, “Look, it’s the Easter bunny!”

The Adopt-a-Highway program started in 1985 in Texas, which still has one of the country’s most vigorous volunteer highway-beautification efforts. Its annual Trash-Off liberated Texas highways of 2 million pounds of litter last year.

California got Adopt-a-Highway in 1989 but put a new twist on the program by authorizing a few companies, like the Adopt-a-Highway Maintenance Corp. in Costa Mesa, to do the cleanup and beautification work for a fee. The clients of such companies are generally big corporations (and stars like Fess Parker, Robin Williams and Bette Midler) who can pay $325 to $450 a month to have a stretch of highway professionally cleaned. For instance, Midler sponsored litter removal on a section of the Ventura Freeway, and Rayne Water Systems, an Irvine company, pays the Adopt-a-Highway Maintenance Corp. to clean up the Jamboree Road interchange on southbound Interstate 405 in Orange County.

Contractors, which maintain about a fourth of the state’s Adopt-a-Highway segments, are most active on busy arteries in metropolitan areas. In the L.A. area, Interstates 405 and 10, U.S. Highway 101 and California Highway 134 are particularly sought after by corporate sponsors. “It’s difficult to expect volunteers to go out on heavily trafficked highways where cars go 60 to 100 mph,” says Patricia Nelson, vice president of Adopt-a-Highway Maintenance Corp. Liability is an issue, and volunteers would have a hard time doing the upkeep that professional cleaners can provide, she says.

In more rural areas, groups and individual volunteers predominate. Barry Kaufman, a professional musician, started cleaning a grapevine-lined stretch of U.S. Highway 101 south of San Luis Obispo in 1991. His sign was good marketing for his music-making, and he liked the outdoor exercise the work provided.

When his mother discovered that some highway adopters pay companies to do the cleanup for them, Kaufman decided to get into the business to augment his income as a strolling mandolin player. Working on his own, Kaufman makes about $2,000 a month collecting trash for 14 clients.

Besides the satisfaction he gets from knowing he’s helping keep the environment clean, the job has other benefits. “On a regular basis, I have the opportunity to perform good deeds by returning things to their owners,” Kaufman says. These include checks, purses, wallets and vehicle registrations.

Kaufman and Davidson are dismayed the most by the alcoholic beverage bottles and cans they find on the roadside. Thankfully, they haven’t come across any body parts. But Davidson once found $120 hanging on a bush, prompting her to tell her husband that money grows on bushes, not trees.

These two volunteers have had time to speculate on why people trash the highways. Some of the littering is unintentional, they say. But they think most of it stems from laziness and disrespect. “There’s a littering state of mind,” Kaufman says, “a disregard for the environment and others.”

And here’s what happens: “The trash just adds up,” says Terri Porter, program coordinator for California Adopt-a-Highway. “We don’t seem to be able to keep up with it.”

In the L.A. area, outlying sections of Interstates 210 and 710 and State Highways 2 and 57 are crying out for adoptive parents. They may not be as scenic as PCH, but California is a beauty from border to border. So who knows how they would look with a little tender loving care?

For more information, call (866) ADOPT-AHWY (236-7824) or visit adopt-a-highway.dot.ca.gov.