The Newport Plain Talk

NEWPORT-You never know who is watching and ifyou are a litterbug you may just find yourself on one of the new litter cameraspurchased by Keep Cocke County Beautiful in conjunction with RID (RemoveIllegal Dump) committee.

"We are taking the war on litter to the nextlevel," said chairman David Veridal. "We know the citizens of this county want to live in a safe cleancommunity and we now have some additional tools to help with the enforcement ofour state litter laws."

The organization has been working with local lawenforcement to "Declare WAR on Litter" and now the office doesn'thave to actually see the littering take place, they can let the pictures speakfor them.

"It will be hard to deny you did the littering ifwe have a picture of you in the act," said Veridal. "We are veryexcited about the progress that has been made in the litter reduction in CockeCounty but to really have a long lasting impact we need to stop littering atthe source and that is with the litterer. Once a person has been caught it isnot likely they will commit the same offence again. So it is important that wetake a stand against littering."

KCCB and RID are hoping citizens will do their partand help report litterbugs in Cocke County by calling either the local number(423) 623-3064 or if they see litter being thrown from a car in Tennessee cal11-(877)-8 LITTER, they will have to give information to an automated line thatwill issue a letter to the registered vehicle's owner letting them know theyhave been spotted trashing Tennessee and what the potential fines could be.

Everyone can do their part to help keep Cock Countybeautiful.