LEWISTON — Ask Dick Morin, a 40-year Lewiston Public Works veteran, what he thinks people could be doing better, and he’ll offer five words: catch basins, sand piles and trash.

Lewiston has some 5,000 catch basins and storm drains on streets, for those of us who don’t use Public Works jargon. Too often, Morin says, people use the catch basins as garbage bins.

As a Public Works supervisor, Morin’s job is to oversee everything from patching potholes to sweeping to basin cleaning. “Whatever needs to be done,” he said.

He’s the Public Works Employee of the Year.

People often put debris along the side of the road, including leaves, branches and dirt. “Some people dump motor oil in,” Morin said.

He fusses about storm drains because rain water goes in the storm drains, which flows to the water treatment center and sometimes the Androscoggin River. If motor oil or junk gets into the river, that pollutes the environment. If the junk goes to the treatment plant, the plant has to work harder to clean the water.

Other strange things Morin and his crew have found in catch basins include purses, clothing and yellow duckies. Cleaning that out “makes our job harder. Time is money.”

In an ideal world, there’d be an “adopt your local catch basin” program, where people would look after the storm drain near where they live. On his own time, Morin looks after the storm drain near his home and keeps it clean.

Two other problems that work against a clean, local environment are piles of sand and dirt some residents leave behind when spring sweeping in front of their homes.

When the street sweepers come by, “It makes it difficult to sweep those piles. The sweeper has to make four or five passes to pick it up,” Morin said. He encourages residents who do spring sweeping to push the resulting pile into a trash bag, not the catch basin.

Here’s another one of Morin’s pet peeves — putting out trash bags days before trash day.

The city law says that trash bags can’t can go out until 6 p.m. the day before. Some people put their trash out three or four days ahead. “It gets knocked over. Birds get into it. It becomes a problem.”