Litter

We take you today to litter court, Judge Morton Krase presiding. "All right, let me explain this to you," Mr. Krase, a black-robed Municipal Court judge, says from the bench after everyone is seated. "These are not criminal cases and you're not criminals. The police should be busy out there arresting robbers and burglars and rapists - not having you in here. This is how I feel about this. Unless it's really extreme, I ain't going to find nobody guilty. This is ridiculous as far as I'm concerned.

How should we get rid of all that litter? "There should be more private contractors, where instead of it just being a city service, maybe we should pay more people to pick up more trash. " - Daniel Frank, 36, of Manayunk, who was visiting Chinatown, at 10th and Arch. "I think the city could have street sweepers cycle through every couple of weeks. That would help. " - Victor Lewis, who lives near Ridge and Midvale avenues, in East Falls. "They need to stop all the circulars from going out, all the menus, they bring them out every day. All the neighbors need to come out and clean in front of their homes.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is putting up for adoption thousands of miles of state roads, and individuals as young as 10 can qualify as caretakers. The scheme is PennDOT's way of involving the community in the endless battle against littering. It will inaugurate the adopt-a-highway beautification program next month to encourage civic groups and individuals to clean up litter along sections of 44,000 miles of state highways. PennDOT will provide safety vests, plastic bags and training to groups and individuals who agree to clean up to 2 miles of state roads for at least two years.

Mary Leed eats breakfast in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park on weekends. She likes to listen to the birds sing. She likes the gentle swaying of the trees. She likes the smell of fresh-cut grass. She lived in San Diego when her children were younger and spent a lot of time in Balboa Park, the splendid home of the San Diego Zoo. FDR Park, she says, could be just as nice. "There's beauty in this park," Leed said Friday. "But on the ground, there's filth. It's pitiful. " Few who have ever visited the 330-acre park adjacent to the Spectrum and JFK Stadium in South Philadelphia could dispute Leed's assessment of FDR's assets.

The scene was familiar enough: an overflowing dumpster on a Center City back street, its contents strewn about the pavement. Happens all the time, and no one is held to account. But just wait . . . Roger Tenant, a supervisor-in-training for SWEEP, the city's new litter enforcement program, surveyed the scene yesterday afternoon and then started ticking off the violations: No license. No visible identification of the owner. No means of securing the dumpster. And, of course, litter all over the street.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Ben Cohen and Teodozia Pepe strolled the grounds of Fluehr Park, a somewhat polluted but nevertheless promising parcel of land on Grant Avenue near Interstate 95. The two friends pointed out the park's highlights - including 10 baseball fields - and low points, among them abandoned cars and a wide assortment of litter. Occasionally, they paused to recruit a new member for their fledgling group, the Friends of Fluehr Park. The 62-acre park has been a source of grief for the residents of East Torresdale.

This year I'm going in a different direction with my New Year's resolutions. Instead of trying to improve work or health habits again, I'll seek to be a better citizen, Here are my New Year's political resolutions for 1991. If I live to be 100, I hope I'll retain some of the satisfaction I felt the first time I voted, as a young man. After I confidently and emphatically marked that ballot, I felt elated by my new identity as an American citizen, I wanted to hug the precinct workers, and I actually skipped down the street to return to work, singing all the way. As with most people, my record from past New Year's resolutions for health or work goals is mixed.

The fact that cats have passed dogs as the most popular pet in America has the people at Waverly Mineral Products in Bala Cynwyd practically purring. Waverly makes Glamour Kitty cat litter. Cat litter is a growth industry. Sales have increased by about 10 percent a year for the past five years. In 1987, the number of cat owners began to exceed the number of dog owners. The popularity of cats has been good for the litter business - but also vice versa. Cats produce particularly smelly urine and waste.

This city has been having a problem with its litter baskets, namely that people have discovered that the baskets have other uses. And as with all useful objects that are left too long on New York's streets, they've been disappearing - about 5,000 a year, at $45 each. "People turn them into backyard barbecues. They chop them up and turn them into basketball hoops. They use them as tables. Some people even use them to put trash in," says sanitation department spokesman Vito A. Turso.

Stuck in traffic again, Chris Woolson spots another suspect. An open car window. A hand draped outside. A cigarette dangling from the fingertips. He watches. He waits. Is the person going to flick the butt? More often than not, yes. That's when Woolson takes action. He jots down the license number, plus the make, model and color of the vehicle. Not long afterward, the person to whom the car is registered will get a litter-awareness letter from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.