Roads
Beautification group sees early benefits from safety equipment

Along with the crepe myrtle blooms, the landscaped Highway 17 median through Litchfield has another splash of color this summer: safety orange.
It flashes from a message board, shouts from banners and sprouts from 300 safety cones along the 3.4 miles maintained by the nonprofit Litchfield Beautification Foundation. And it seems to be working.
“I think my crew feels safer,” said Chad O’Brien, co-owner of Waccamaw Landscaping, which works under contract for the foundation. “They do see the traffic slowing down.”
The maintenance work is paid for by private donations and annual grants funded by Georgetown County’s accommodations tax revenue. The county approved $76,722 last year to purchase safety equipment, which also includes flashing lights for the landscapers’ trucks and mowers.
The request from the foundation followed an incident where a car crashed through a patch of landscaping near Litchfield Drive, missing a landscape crew by about 10 feet.
There have been other incidents over the years, said Ken Dewell, president of the foundation, but that was the tipping point.
The equipment arrived at the start of summer, when the landscape crews and the traffic are busiest. Along with mowing, the crews trim the plants and pick up litter. They also replace plants damaged by vehicles.
The message board, a $22,500 device, was set up facing southbound traffic where the speed limit changes from 55 to 45 mph. It provides the first warning. Next come the roll-down banners that move with the mowers.
For the cones, “we tried to concentrate on the intersections,” O’Brien said. “It’s still a learning curve.”
The foundation would like to get a second message board for northbound traffic, Dewell said.
It is also seeking another grant to pay for “care and feeding” of the safety equipment, he said. That’s because it takes up to two and a half hours to set up and take down each time and has to be insured.
But the equipment pays off in improved safety and slower traffic.
“That’s a good sign,” Dewell said.