LIVINGSTON - A partnership between the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office and Keep Livingston Beautiful made great strides last month in their effort to clean up their area.

Along with the help of the Livingston Parish government, a total of 4200 bags of litter were collected, covering over 120 miles of roadways in the process.

Officials say the amount of trash they collected was almost as much as all of 2024.

A big reason for this was the creation of a full-time time litter detail for the LPSO.

"The way our parish litter detail works, is we have two full-time deputies that work from eight to four every day. They take litter crews out and they work on parish roads. We have a paid detail for our state roads where we have a deputy, a volunteer deputy can sign up and handle our state request," LPSO Lt. Col. Lancy Landry said.

A deputy will be assigned to a group of four inmates who volunteer for that work detail.

The LPSO and Keep Livingston Beautiful have worked together as a partnership for over 20 years. However, during that time, it was a volunteer detail from the Sheriff's Office that would go out only two days a week.

Now, it's full-time.

"Now we're just gonna start partnering with them and help pay for a deputy so we can have five days a week and it's made a tremendous difference on our parish," Keep Livingston Beautiful Director Lynda Gardiner said.

Gardiner says their goals are now getting more communities in Livingston involved in the cleanup.

"Maybe it's getting in touch with the pastors and the different churches in the areas and let them know what we're doing," Gardiner suggested.

She's also been going to schools to get the youth excited about keeping their town litter-free.

In their clean-up efforts, they've noticed one type of trash popping up a lot recently.

"Especially tires. We have a lot of that problem right now and it's just because there's nowhere to take them, people don't want to pay to dump them off," Gardiner said.

Gardiner added the parish is hosting tire disposal events. The next one is on March 29 at the Livingston Parish Public Works in the town of Livingston.

According to Louisiana law, the littering of tires can result in fines worth thousands of dollars, and is responsible for the cost of removal, transportation, and processing of the tires.