St. Tammany News

Litter bugs beware - if caught, you could pay fines 500 percent higher than before.

The St. Tammany Parish Council on Thursday adopted an ordinance calling for more stringent fines and other penalties for those caught flicking a cigarette butt out the car window, planting a snipe sign, dumping commercial materials or more. Effective immediately, four categories of littering will see increased fines - simple, intentional, commercial and gross. Simple littering, such as flicking cigarette butts, would see first offense fines jump from $50 and four hours of community service to $75 and eight hours.

Fines for intentional littering, such as placing snipe signs, could jump 500 percent from a $50 fine and four hours of community service on first offense to $250 and eight hours. Gross and commercial littering, the most serious offenses typically occurring on a large scale with piles of construction debris, washers, dryers and more, carries the heftiest of penalties, sometimes reaching thousands of dollars in fines and even jail time.

"Fighting the scourge of litter has been a cornerstone of the St. Tammany Parish government since the day I became parish president," Kevin Davis wrote in a letter addressing litter.

Since he took office more than eight years ago, Davis founded a litter court to specifically fine violators and also created a litter abatement crew dedicated to picking up trash along the parish's 914 miles of roadway.

"But all these programs and achievements mean little without the help of citizens like you," Davis wrote. "Fighting the scourge of litter is a community effort."

Now with the increased fines, investigators have a stronger arm to attack violators.

"We need to do this to have more bite in the system, to beef (penalties) up," Rick Moore, a parish litter abatement official, has said. "(For litterers) it's a matter of mentality that they can dump their garbage off anywhere. It needs to stop."

Last year, 132,620 pounds of trash were removed from parish-governed roads, St. Tammany Parish spokeswoman Suzanne Parsons Stymiest said. This equals a little less than a pound of garbage per registered voter.

Meanwhile, only 19 people were cited, and combined, those violators paid fines of $4,305, she said. Roughly $30,000 in fines have been levied since Davis took office, he said.