EcoEKY: Green News from Eastern Kentucky

from the Ashland Daily Independent:

Buses to connect Tri-State

Published: May 04, 2008 11:25 pm

Two routes to service Lawrence

By CARRIE KIRSCHNER - The Independent

ASHLAND — For the first time in almost three decades the Tri-State will be linked by bus service.

Beginning July 1, the Tri-State Transit Authority, under contract with the Ironton-Lawrence County Community Action Organization, will begin running continuous bus service from Lawrence County to Huntington and Ashland.

There will be two fixed routes serving Lawrence County, according to Mike Payne, director of public transportation within the Lawrence County Port Authority. The port authority was the designee of the state and federal grants funding the service and is working with the CAO and TTA to provide the service.

The first fixed route will run from Proctorville to Ironton along the river with destination stops in Huntington including Marshall University, St. Mary’s Medical Center and Pullman Square and the TTA bus center at 13th Street and Fourth Avenue. It will also make stops at the Wal-Mart and Sam’s in Burlington and at Ohio University-Southern and the Ironton Hills Plaza. That route will run continuously from east to west all day long, Payne said.

The second fixed route will serve the city of Ironton and will go to Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital in Russell, the Ashland Wal-Mart, Ashland Town Center and King’s Daughters Medical Center, along with the Ashland Bus Depot. That route will run four times a day.

Buses will run from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays. Initial fares are expected to be 75 cents but Payne said it may increase based on fuel prices that could increase even before buses begin running July 1.

Five buses have been purchased using federal funds, Payne said. Three will carry up to 20 passengers and the remaining two up to 30 passengers. All are handicap and wheelchair accessible.

Mike Rogers, superintendent of Ashland’s Bus System, said the addition will be an asset to both Ohio and Kentucky residents.

Payne said the routes will “connect the Tri-State.” Ohio riders will get to destinations in Ashland and Huntington, while riders from those areas will also be able to get to Ironton and Ohio destinations, although the routes will not be direct, he said.

Payne said there is a possibility that some express runs to major employers and area colleges could be added in the future. “We want to establish the basic fixed service now and grow from that,” he said.

CARRIE KIRSCHNER can be reached at ckirschner@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.

From the Ashland Daily-Independent Online:

Put trash here

Published: March 31, 2008 04:03 pm

Lawrence County plans to use an $8,400 award from East Kentucky PRIDE to place 14 large roll-off trash bins at 12 locations throughout the county. Here’s hoping they prove more effective than the first “green boxes” placed throughout the county more than 25 years ago.

There are at least two reasons to hope that this effort will be more successful. One is that attitudes about illegal dumps and litter have changed in the last quarter of a century. The other is that the Lawrence County Fiscal Court recently enacted a mandatory trash collection ordinance.

Instead of ordinary household waste, Eddie Michael — the former Lawrence County school superintendent who now serves as the county’s deputy judge-executive — said the new dumpsters will be for old appliances, cabinets and other items too large to be picked up by regular trash collectors. In fact, about the only items that the bins will not collect are old tires and glass and items primarily made out of glass.

Back in the early 1980s, Lawrence County became one of the first area counties to place green boxes throughout the county where residents could deposit their household waste. It was hoped the dumpsters would eliminate — or at least reduce — illegal dumping in the county.

But it didn’t quite work that way. Instead of becoming a way to eliminate eyesores in the county, the green boxes became eyesores. So many people deposited trash in them, that the county could not empty them quickly enough. Thus, each of the dump sites soon became littered with trash. Finding the trash containers full, residents wanting to use them for their trash simply dumped the trash on the ground near them.

County officials soon concluded that the green baxes were causing more problems than they solved, and they were removed. What had seemed like a good idea for eliminating illegal dumping did not work that way in practice.

But in the ensuing years, attitudes about trash have changed. For that, PRIDE — Personal Responsibility for a Desirable Environment — deserves much of the credit. Since being founded in 1997 by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers and the late James Bickford, secretary of the state environmental protection cabinet under former Gov. Paul Patton, PRIDE has emphasized the need to end the trashing of eastern Kentucky. The efforts of Rogers and many others have been effective. While illegal dumping continues to be a problem in the region, it is not nearly as bad as it was a decade ago.

Michael said no Lawrence County resident will be more than three miles from a collection bin. And if the elderly or disabled cannot get the items to the dumpsters, the county will pick them up. That should eliminate any excuses for throwing the old washing machine over a hillside instead of placing it in one of the dumpsters.