The Golden State at risk of becoming the Garbage State

In the 1970s the U.S. Forest Service started using the mascot Woodsy Owl as a way to teach children to love and appreciate nature.  Woodsy’s two famous mottos were, “Give a hoot — don’t pollute!” and “Lend a hand — care for the land!”

Well, modern day California could use a refresher from Woodsy because the new prevailing wisdom seems to be, “Trash the state — you’re gonna skate!”

Embarrassingly, heaping helpings of rubbish and filth have stopped being just an eyesore and are now becoming a serious threat to both public health and our fragile ecosystem.

Just recently, Joel Grover of NBC4 reported that thanks to the mountains of uncollected trash at encampments downtown, Los Angeles’ typhus epidemic has spread from the city’s homeless population into City Hall itself.

According to the California Department of Public Health, last year there were 124 documented cases of typhus in L.A. County, a new record.

Last October, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti allocated millions of dollars to increase clean-ups of streets in the Skid Row area, known lately as “the typhus zone.” But four months later, NBC4 documented huge piles of garbage just outside the “typhus zone.” Or as L.A. realtors call it, “Typhus zone-adjacent.”

Typhus, by the way, is a disease you definitely want to stay away from — it can cause fevers, nausea and vomiting.  In fact, the first sign of typhus in L.A. is often friends saying, “What diet are you on?  You look amazing!”

As it turns out, the San Gabriel River is just about as nauseating as downtown Los Angeles.

After the recent rains, the sand on Seal Beach was decorated with a cornucopia of shopping carts, furniture, baby strollers, suitcases and orange cones, among other discarded supplies that made their way down the river.

Beachgoer Trish Gussler traveled to Seal Beach this Sunday to go bird watching and was heartbroken over what she discovered.  She told the Orange County Register, “It was horrifying, that’s the only way I could explain it. … It was phenomenally sad.”

In Malibu, to address a growing litter problem, the beachside city has banned plastic straws, coffee stirrers and utensils.

Without the plastic straws, residents in the upscale community are now forced to snort their coke through rolled-up $100 bills.  Talk about being green’

In Northern California, Berkeley will require businesses to charge customers 25 cents for each disposable cup.

I guess they figured that Starbucks coffee just wasn’t expensive enough already.

As it turns out, living like disgusting pigs isn’t isolated to one geographic region or city in California — the carelessness is statewide. A 2016 survey from Caltrans found that 20 percent of California drivers litter on state highways.

In 2016 there were 26.2 million licensed drivers in California — which, going by my math, means we are home to 5.2 million litterbugs.

Lovely.

Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty is not impressed. “These findings are staggering because this is not accidental public behavior but rather a conscious decision to improperly discard or leave behind debris along California freeways,” he said.

In other words, millions of people in California feel comfortable trashing our state on purpose.

Currently, the penalties for littering in California range between fines of $100 to $1,000 and between 8 and 24 hours of community service. Clearly this isn’t enough of a deterrent to discourage at least 1 in 5 Californians from behaving like jerks.

In Oregon, litterers can be fined up to $6,250 and imprisoned for up to one year, or both.

Maybe instead of trying to decide which plastic product to ban next, we should increase our littering penalties to Oregon’s levels, at least until our beaches stop looking like the “Sanford and Son” junkyard. And while we’re at it, it’s also imperative that we clean out and disinfect any homeless encampments that allow garbage to pile up and become a threat to public health.

If we don’t, the Golden State will soon be known as the Garbage State.

John Phillips can be heard weekdays at 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. on “The Morning Drive with John Phillips and Jillian Barberie” on KABC/AM 790.

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