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Report for America is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.

Adopt-a-Highway Program Picking up Speed in Rockford

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Rotary of Rockford Preparing to Collect Litter

Every year, Illinois spends more than 6 million dollars on litter pickup. 

 

Pat Fong is a volunteer with Rotary of Rockford East-Cherry Valley. She says that the group comes out four times a year to pick up trash alongside East State Street near I-90 via the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Adopt-a-Highway program. Fong said that the area has seen significant improvement.

 

“Oh my goodness, the first time it's like we just picked up a great, just a ton of garbage,” said Fong. “Just anywhere from you know metal, tires, plastics, paper bags, you know, just just really garbage.”

 

Joe Schatteman with IDOT said the program started up again last June after limiting activity at the beginning of the pandemic. He says turnout is beginning to return to pre-pandemic numbers. 

 

“Absolutely. I see people coming out,” said Schatteman. “I mean, the number of reports that we got in just for the month of April alone was very high.”

 

The data from IDOT shows that in 2020, volunteers collected 656 bags of garbage. And, so far this year volunteers have already collected nearly 600 bags. 

 

  • Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project which is a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms.
Juanpablo covers environmental, substandard housing and police-community relations. He’s been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, Ramirez-Franco produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois. He is a graduate of Knox College.