It's been a year since engineer Steve Osborn put a canoe in Shades Creek to pick up the tennis balls, Wal-Mart bags and occasional toilets and car batteries he's found there.

The peeling Adopt-A-Stream sign at the Columbiana Road stream crossing in Homewood attests that Osborn's company, American Environmental Engineering, is the parent in charge of keeping the crossing free of litter.

The five-employee company also has been cleaning a Cahaba River crossing at Overton Road and three Shades Creek crossings at U.S. 280, U.S. 31 and Columbiana Road since 1997.

"We've been a little lax this year," said Osborn, a board member of the Montgomery nonprofit group called Alabama PALS (People Against a Littered State), which turns 20 this year.

PALS is marking its anniversary with some rare publicity: a 30-second public service announcement by "American Idol" Taylor Hicks with the slogan, "Don't Drop It on Alabama."

Osborn hopes the television and radio spots, which began airing in June, will renew interest in the campaign.

"Every little bit that someone picks up helps," he said. "It's really a neat little program."

The group formed in 1987 to help run the state highway department's new cleanup program at the height of a littering awareness surge. The Alabama Department of Transportation, which erects and takes down adoption signs, contributes half the group's $200,000 yearly budget.

But the perpetual nature of litter can outlast the endurance of even the staunchest good citizen, as dozens of battered Adopt-A-Mile and Adopt-A-Stream signs in Jefferson County attest.

"People get enthused about it, and we get enthused about it and try to pump it up from our side, but with so many other responsibilities, it gets put on the back burner," said John Lorentson, an engineer and maintenance director at ALDOT. The state will take down signs of disbanded groups if they are called to its attention, he said.

Lorentson said cleaning roadsides consumes 90 percent of the highway department's $7 million maintenance budget, using 200,000 employee hours per year.

Funding, interest take hits:

Interest took off when the Adopt-A-Mile program was launched but has declined and leveled off to about 100 new groups signing on each year, with about the same number leaving, Lorentson said. About 1,500 civic groups care for 1,700 of the state's 11,000 miles of interstates and U.S. and state highways, he said.

Spencer Ryan, PALS' director for 20 years and one of two paid staff members, said low funding meant virtually no statewide publicity campaign until this year. An ad in the early 1990s featured a law enforcement official warning against littering. "This one (with Hicks) is a lot more positive," he said.

In fiscal 2005, PALS quit receiving money from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, which had given the group $100,000 to $150,000 each year from 1996 to 2001. PALS now relies on the money from ALDOT and corporate sponsorships.

Participating groups agree to pick up litter on a mile of road for two years. For PALS' Adopt-A-Stream program, they agree to pick up litter visible from the road at stream crossings. PALS provides the garbage bags and advertising slicks. The signs serve as the reward, and reminder, of that commitment.

And that works for most people.

"I guess the best motivator is guilt," said Alex Varner, an avid outdoorsman and partner in Higher Ground Roasters in Leeds. The company maintains two U.S. 78 Cahaba River crossings it adopted in 2004.

"Your name's on the sign," he said. "You just don't want someone to say, `Nice sign,' as you're standing in 8 feet of plastic bottles."

`Rough-looking' roads:

Irondale Councilman John Schoen agrees. Schoen helped the city's Exchange Club chapter put 20 miles of "rough-looking" Irondale roads under adoption in 1989, primarily on U.S. 78. Only nine of those miles, including one mile kept by Schoen's business, are still active, he said. But most of the signs are still standing.

That's OK, Schoen said, because even old signs serve as a reminder not to litter.

Schoen said the PALS group was part of a larger campaign to get Irondale more involved in picking up trash. Irondale's "Clean as a Whistle" spring cleanup, part of PALS' statewide cleanup, collected 10.25 tons of debris in April, he said.

Schoen said he encouraged one business to keep its grounds clean by bagging up the refuse himself and depositing it on the company's front counter.

"Highway 78 was so rough (in 1989) that when you were down there picking stuff up, they would throw more stuff at you," Schoen said.

But Michael Shattuck, director of business development for the Birmingham Metropolitan Development Board, had a different experience. Shattuck contacted PALS in June about starting an Adopt-A-Mile program in McCalla, where he's building a house. Shattuck said he was embarrassed by "appalling" drifts of litter on Eastern Valley Road, Coleman Lake Road and Tannehill Parkway, leading to a state park.

"In my profession, we market the region for businesses interested in moving into the area," he said. International prospects especially note how well maintained the area is, he said.

Shattuck said people stop to applaud him as he picks up trash on a mile of Coleman Lake Road, collecting cigarette packs, beer cans, fast-food litter and gum wrappers.

"So many things are hard to solve," he said. "This is something that's not real complex, and you get immediate results."