ACADIA PARISH — Keeping roads clean in Acadia Parish has been a challenge, but a partnership between the Acadia Parish Sheriff’s Office, the Acadia Parish Police Jury, and the Office of the Lieutenant Governor is showing results.
Litter crews are regularly removing everything from construction materials to tires that have been dumped along parish roadways.
“Trying to keep our roadways clean, and we also go back behind there, use the stats from there to try and do some enforcement aspect behind there,” said Sheriff KP Gibson.
“It’s a really big challenge because it’s not just people throwing things out of their window, you’re talking about construction material, you’re talking about tires being thrown out. You name it, I think they pretty much found a lot of things — even found a toilet one time in a ditch from that aspect,” Gibson added.
Nearly a year ago, the sheriff’s office teamed up with the police jury after receiving grant funding from Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser’s office.
“When the Lieutenant Governor put out their grant we decided, hey, we’d like to… team up, call the police jury, and we’d like to get this rolling,” Gibson said.
The funding allowed the parish to purchase a new litter abatement truck and trailer, giving crews the tools to tackle large-scale dumping.
Deputies supervise inmate crews as they pick up trash along the right-of-way, track problem areas, and enforce litter laws.
“And then that deputy will work to help with different transports that we need, which is a cost of us and the police jury, so it offsets both of our costs from that aspect,” Gibson said.
Corey Vincent, Acadia Parish Police Jury Administrator, says the program also helps taxpayers get more value from existing resources.
“Our guys get paid to cut grass, the litter abatement program goes from having to pay our guys to pick up trash, our taxpayer gets more for their money,” Vincent said. “We can’t afford to have 20 or 30 workers, so having the help, we really appreciate it.”
Sheriff Gibson noted that on average, crews are removing five to ten thousand pounds of trash each month. The program allows crews to clean more effectively while enforcing litter laws, helping make Acadia Parish safer and more attractive for residents and potential new businesses.
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