Dog poop is not the stuff of polite conversation. It is, however, the stuff of daily life in cities where dogs are common companions to man.

Marvin Coker is diligent about picking up after his dog during their daily walk in downtown Lewiston, and he’s appalled that other dog owners don’t do the same. He should be.

Not only are the piles unsightly, they’re unhealthy.

The city has certainly made it easy to deposit waste in waste cans in public parks. There are better than a dozen trash cans in Kennedy Park and plenty in other parks. And, yet, within feet of many of these cans there are offending piles of poop. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to stow a couple of plastic shopping bags in a coat pocket to have ready in case of need, but not enough people are making that effort and the downtown suffers because of it.

City ordinances require pet owners to dispose of deposits. If owners don’t, the duty falls to the owner of the property where the excrement has been deposited. It’s nasty enough to pick up after your own dog; it’s grossly unfair to expect a property owner to pick up piles that accumulate through the week.

The solution, of course, is for every pet owner to conscienciously clean up after their dog, but that’s clearly not happening and there are not enough city employees to police the clean-up.

An alternative might be for the city to install pet waste stations around town, where dog owners can pull out a plastic bag and make a deposit at the same place, but these stations are expensive.

What we need is an awareness campaign, a group of people who are as disgusted as Marvin Coker is and who want to do something to beautify the downtown. It could be modeled after the very successful neighborhood crime watches and there may be some grant funds available to buy signs reminding owners to pick up after their dogs.

These kinds of campaigns have worked well in other cities and cities have benefited from the effort.

Lewiston’s downtown and its residents are worth that effort.