Lincoln County is becoming cleaner by the year, an official witha community appearance organization told supervisors Monday.

Keep Lincoln County Beautiful committee member Homer Richardsonsaid the results of the KLCB’s annual litter survey showed that thecounty and the city were “trending downwards” in terms of litter.He said there was an 8 percent improvement in the city and an 18percent improvement in the county over last year.

“The good news is that we’re much improved,” Richardson said.”The bad news is that it’s gonna be hard to improve on this fornext year.”

Improving next year is next year’s problem. For now, Richardsonsaid the county and city rating was around 1.5 on the litter scale,which operates on a ranking of one through four, with onerepresenting no litter and four requiring organized help to cleanthe street-side trash deposits.

“It’s looking better,” Richardson said. “Right now, 1.5 isreally good. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to get to a one,but we’re looking good.”

Lincoln County and the city of Brookhaven have participated inthe litter survey for eight years.

Every November, the Keep Lincoln County Beautiful committeevisits the same undisclosed locations, which are changed whencommittee members come and go, to tally the litter score. There are15 locations in each of the five county districts and 15 locationsin the city.

While some of the surveyed areas have had their spikes, thecounty as a whole has improved annually since 2000. The cityimproved 8.64 percent since last November. The five countydistricts all improved as follows:

* District One – 13.94 percent.

* District Two – 21.27 percent.

* District Three – 25.17 percent.

* District Four – 25.39 percent.

* District Five – 12.90 percent.

The entire county scored an improvement rate of 18.46percent.

Keep Lincoln County Beautiful submits the findings of its littersurvey to Keep Mississippi Beautiful, where it is likewiseforwarded to Keep America Beautiful.