L.A. Mayor Karen Bass spoke exclusively with KNX News on Wednesday, and at one point, she expressed how horrified she is by the amount of trash around the city.
While she did vow to clean it up, the mayor wasn't ready to take all the blame, saying some of the responsibility for the mess falls on Caltrans.
"The freeways look terrible. You go to some cities, and the freeways are beautiful - they're green, they're lush. In our city, you see trash, you see graffiti. But you know what? That's a state issue, it's Caltrans." Bass said.
Charles Feldman on L.A.'s Afternoon News got a response from local Caltrans spokesman Eric Menjivar.
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Menjivar said, through a program called Clean California, "We've already removed more than 300,000 cubic yards of litter on our roadways."
He also pointed out that Caltrans has over 150 maintenance workers dedicated solely to litter removal and runs an adopt-a-highway program for organizations and businesses to sponsor the cleaning of the highway in their community.
If all this effort is being put into cleaning, what accounts for the garbage the mayor and many in our communities are seeing? Menjivar said the amount of littering is an unfortunate issue all over the state, not just here in L.A..
Menjivar said Caltrans will continue to do its job, but "The number one thing we need to do as a society is take care of our spaces." He believes a big part of their work moving forward will be educating the public.
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