Trash piling up on popular greenway in Charlotte

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — People have been dumping trash at the Little Sugar Creek Greenway and visitors at the greenway call it deplorable as storm water officials try to combat the constant problem.

Stephanie Ketsner who walks the greenway often is outraged by trash in Little Sugar Creek and along its banks.

"There are garbage bins,” Ketsner said.  “I mean, why do we think that we can just throw it on the ground and it's going to disappear?"

There was a shopping cart, lighter, rubber ball and hundreds of ribbons of plastic along the creek near Fourth and Third streets.

"Sometimes they pick it up,” resident Kojo Saka said. “I've seen them. You know they go in the water and pick it up, but sometimes it piles up."

Charlotte storm water officials said that hundreds of volunteers picked up nearly 22,000 pounds of trash from Little Sugar Creek last year.

Officials are also stepping up efforts to catch litterbugs.

"We're patrolling known areas where people have been dumping,” Charlotte storm water official Marke Boone said. “We're also experimenting with surveillance to catch people doing that."

The trash flows downstream to where the creek meets the Catawba River.

"It kills our habitat,” Boone said. “It's bad for the wildlife. It makes our community look trashed."

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