Meet the men who cleaned 240,000 pounds of trash off Oregon's highways
May 31 marks one year since Fernando Rodriguez was released from prison.
Now 25, he spent seven years in an Idaho prison for a drug possession conviction from when he was a teenager. After his release, he moved to Oregon and secured a full-time job cleaning litter from Oregon's highways — a job that gives him financial stability and helps provide for his family.
However, it's unclear whether he'll still have this job after June 2025.
With no long-term funding plan yet approved by the Oregon Legislature, the Oregon Department of Transportation is facing significant budget shortfalls driven by declining tax revenue, inflation and spending restrictions. The department estimates it needs $1.8 billion more each year to pay for road maintenance and repairs. Without new ways of adding revenue, the department could scale back essential services like road maintenance, snow removal, customer support and highway and graffiti cleanup.
Rodriguez works at Interstate Business Solutions, an Indiana-based company that primarily hires formerly incarcerated individuals, veterans and people facing homelessness for jobs cleaning highway litter. The company has contracts with state departments in several states — including Indiana, Ohio, Missouri and Kansas — and began contracting with the Oregon Department of Transportation in April 2024.
Since then, workers like Rodriguez have cleaned nearly 240,000 pounds of litter off sections of Interstates 5, 84 and 205 and U.S Highway 26. Most of the litter comes from homeless encampments on the highway, Rodriguez said.
'For years, those encampments have been neglected and trash has developed from people living on the side of the highway. The daily garbage you'd find in the garbage can in your house is all over the highways in piles,' Rodriguez told the Capital Chronicle, adding that his supervisor has to pick up used needles they regularly find.
Interstate Business Solutions has received $4 million from the Oregon Department of Transportation to clean state highways.
Using a contractor to clean litter off the highways allows the Oregon Department of Transportation to increase litter service removal without adding more tasks for maintenance employees, department spokesperson Katherine Benenati told the Capital Chronicle.
The Oregon Department of Transportation spends about $250,000 each month in all of Clackamas, Multnomah and Hood River Counties and eastern Washington County, Benenati said.
Highway litter causes environmental degradation and motor vehicle accidents and negatively impacts tourism and a business' decision to move to a city, Interstate Business Solutions spokesperson Morgan Johnston told the Capital Chronicle. However, the company sees its work as more than just cleaning up highways.
'Our mission is to not only keep Oregon clean and beautiful but to change the lives of our employees for the better,' Johnston said.
Formerly incarcerated individuals make up 50% of the company's workforce. Without the company's services, the Portland metro area would see a significant increase in litter on the more than 500 miles its staff regularly cleans, Johnston said.
The job helps employee Eric Gamble provide for his daughter and granddaughter. Gamble was released from an Oregon prison in 2020 for a gun offense, and he worked at gas stations before joining the cleanup crew.
Dante Patton, another crew member, has achieved sobriety, steady income and job security since joining the highway cleanup crew.
'People used to love to come to Oregon, and they would say how beautiful it was,' Interstate Business Solutions Field Supervisor Dale Schultz told the Capital Chronicle. 'You don't get that much anymore because of the way the highway was looking, but now people are starting to look again and say 'Wow, they're cleaning it up.''
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