‘Beautify Carolina Forest’ expresses concerns about roadside advertisement signs considered litter

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WMBF) - For those living in Carolina Forest, advertisement signs along the side of the roads are driven past daily.

The non-profit organization, Beautify Carolina Forest, is saying that those signs are illegal and complicating their goal of keeping the community roads clean.

President, Betsy Fay, said these signs are illegal per an Horry County ordinance.

“The problem is there’s not a lot of enforcement available because we don’t have a lot of enforcement people for Carolina Forest,” said Fay. “The person that enforces is so busy with other things that litter is the least of his problems.”

A litter index by the Keep Horry County Beautiful Committee ranks Carolina Forest as the region with the least amount of litter in the county.

Fay expressed he takes pride in that, but is more concerned with the signs, as it’s been an issue for four years.

Fay said it’s up to Beautify Carolina Forest to make sure all litter, including illegal signs, is picked up and thrown away to keep Carolina Forest clean.

To do that, she said she needs more help from law enforcement officers and for offenders to understand that temporary signs are equivalent to littering.

“We still have problems with trash, but we don’t have any enforcement, but we find whole bags of trash and we used to be able to take a picture of if we could find a piece of mail in the trash, we could take a picture of it and send it to the North precinct and they would actually prosecute the person,” said Fay. “They tell us now we can’t do it that way anymore. The enforcement person has to find the bag.”

Fay said this will be discussed at their next “Keep Horry County Beautiful” meeting on Jan. 24, 2023, in the Multipurpose Room B of the Conway Government and Justice Center.

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