Earth Day's Come, Gone. Yet NEVADA amid Most "litter-polluted"

by STEVE SPACEK @litterscorecard

WASHINGTON, D.C. April 29, 2018 – Nevada takes top honors for the West as the most "litter-polluted," of ten American state governments. States where littering and dumping is visible and widespread, and where above-average fatalities are attributed to related vehicle accidents. This information comes as Americans, after celebrating Earth Day a week earlier “still stay concerned about unmitigated toxic pollution, " said Steve Spacek, director of the American State Litter Scorecard.

The states of Texas, New Jersey, Michigan, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Georgia and South Carolina make for the remaining nine of the 10 "most litter polluted" selection, he said.

[Since 2008, Nevada has made the Scorecard "worst" governments list, and in 2014 rated as #1 bottommost for a 12-state Western USA area.]

The "most litter polluted" rankings are based on evaluated indicators from government, nonprofit and private sources, including observations by citizens, deaths from collisions with rubbish, "profiled litterer" population percentages, effectiveness of litter abatement spending, public entity corruption rankings and discernible maintenance by employees, contractors and volunteers.

Mr. Spacek said recent Gallup Polls found a majority of Americans have a "great deal of concern" about toxic pollutants lingering at water and landed areas managed by states and localities. "Since the 1970s, Gallup's noted most respondents believe the public sector's not worked hard enough to protect the environment."

Despite the concerns found by Gallup, the physical activities of quite a few citizens and business across Nevada seem to show "there's apparently another side not mentioned to pollsters, about the less to literally no concern to alleviate pollution problems here in Nevada," said Spacek. “Inappropriate littering and dumping by 1000's of Nevadans create hurtful conditions statewide. Diseases can breed, causing injuries to animals and humans. Motorists still get killed in road litter accidents. Yet Nevadans keep on discarding, burning more solid waste than most Americans. In the Silver State, there’s no mandated recycling; no true teaching of, respect for, environmental maintenance and preservation.”

Though required by laws and ordinances, quite a few maintenance personnel, contractors and volunteers for the Nevada Department of Transportation and local governments "flout those edicts, appear to act a bit too lazy, unable to police their misconduct, end up doing terrible cleanup jobs.” Spacek added, “The Center for State Integrity gave the State of Nevada an ‘F “grade. With a Center-noted, crippled ethics enforcement system in effect statewide, true task accountability and oversight will always remain questionable from lax Legislative operations based at Carson City.”

[Author's Note: Portions of this Patch.com story came from a related, April 18, 2018 press release from Newswire.com that appeared in newspapers and televised newscasts nationwide. Follow the Scorecard on TWITTER; AmericanStateLitterScorecard FACEBOOK page; litterscorecard.com website]