Spring cleaning in Warwick is more than a one-day job

Letter to the editor: Once again Warwick is facing a spring clean up sponsored by the Warwick Valley Chamber of Commerce and this exercise is to be commended. However, it takes in a very small fraction of the Town’s filthy roadsides and much more needs to be done. Citizen participation is absolutely essential, first, and foremost, in not littering our roadsides to start with and, secondly, by helping as the chamber does each spring. I believe that the primary responsibility lies with our Town Government which needs to establish hefty fines, post those fines and generally educate our Warwick public that littering will not be permitted in the Town of Warwick. To my knowledge, the Town does none of these things and our roadsides get more and more littered. And more and more unsightly. Many of us have, over the years, picked up the filthy, thoughtless debris of others but the problem is getting worse. Two years ago my husband and I picked up nine big black bags of litter just along our own roadside. Certainly an Earth Day educational campaign by both the town and the schools could help. Why not make a non-littering, litter pickup the centerpiece of Earth Day every year and return our Warwick back roads to their natural clean beauty? Warwick once won an America The Beautiful Award for its roadside pickup program. Maybe it is time to resume this program which was directed from our town supervisor’s office. Elmire L. Conklin Warwick