Cleaning Up Covington: The Dirt on Northern Kentucky

An article in the Post this week talks about complaints from 12th Street residents in Covington, who claim that trash and weeds are taking over.

A few things to consider about trash in Northern Kentucky:

1. When I lived in the Mansion Hill area of Newport, we had trash pick-up twice a week. This greatly contributed to keeping the city clean.


2. Call CSI waste management services (who provides trash pick-up for Covington) and ask for a recycling bin and you'll be waiting for a while. My bins kept getting stolen, and it took half a dozen phone calls to CSI and several months before I received one. Then two, then three.


3. The suspension bridge in Covington looks better than it did a couple of years ago. I saw a guy peeing off the side the other night, but that's nothing new.

I worry about the garbage strewn around in Covington's riverside district. It piles up before and after Reds and Bengals games. Here's my concern, an idea I've had for a while now: I think that some people, when they are away from home, lose their manners.

You see this on airplanes, which are dirty enough to freak out any germophobe (ahem), in airports and in areas with a lot of traffic, like riverside and the Levee. Like it's ok to be a slob when you're away from home, because somebody else will clean up after you. I don't think these people are throwing trash on the ground in their home or even in their neighborhoods. But it's almost like bad-boy behavior, seeing what you can get away with when no one is looking.

Greener cities impose stiff fines for littering, and even stiffer fines for repeat offenders. It's something that Northern Kentucky might consider, as they continue to develop residential and business properties and attempt to attract out-of-towners to the area.