DENVER -- State highway officials are so worried about the number of drivers throwing containers of urine from their vehicles that they want to increase the fine for such littering.
The Colorado Department of Transportation is also working to enclose the cabs of its lawn-mowing equipment so that workers don't get hit by exploding bottles when mower blades hit the containers. Maintenance workers who find bottles filled with yellow liquid are trained to report the bottles as hazardous waste and ask for a special pickup.
Right now, anyone caught throwing such a bottle would face a littering fine as low as $35, said Herman Stockinger of CDOT. Officials are considering raising the penalty for littering human waste to $500.
Truckers complain that there aren't enough rest areas on the highway although many say that's no excuse for tossing the bottles on roadsides.
"It's disgusting; they're pigs," truck driver Tony Dwyer said while getting fuel along Interstate 70 in Wheat Ridge. "If I see someone throwing something out the window, I get on the CB radio and holler at them."
Greg Fulton, president of the Colorado Motor Carriers Association, said only a small percentage of drivers litter that way and not all of them are truckers.
While working on Interstate 76 recently at the Keensburg-Hudson exit, maintenance supervisor Roy Smith found a bottle filled with a yellow liquid and an empty gallon water jug cut to look like a handheld urinal.
"I don't care what they do in the truck; it's when it hits the ground that it's my problem," Smith said.
Officials hope to have a bill with stiffer penalties introduced at the state Legislature next year.
The crackdown comes at the same time the state is moving to get private companies to pay for trash pickup along some roads in Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
Companies would pay $800 to have their name posted on a sign along a stretch of highway and pay from $300 to $400 a month to pay for trash pickup by a state contractor.