MANCHESTER — When John Juza saw someone had painted the leaves of one of the trees along the South Manchester Rail Trail, that was a new low.

It's bad enough that the asphalt path, fences, signs and nearly every other flat surface along the trail is regularly and thoroughly tagged with graffiti.

“It's everywhere, the place just gets hammered,” he said, during a recent a visit to the trail, which runs parallel to South Willow Street, tucked away behind the strip malls and big box stores.

Juza and his wife have become unofficial stewards of the trail, filling trash bags with litter and removing shopping carts — they recently pulled out seven of them that had been stuffed into a culvert.

But there's only so much they can do, especially when it comes to graffiti. And city officials say much the same thing.

The litter and graffiti are especially disappointing to Juza, a lifelong Manchester resident, because in his opinion, the trail is “one of the best things this city did.”

The South Manchester Rail Trail was opened a decade ago. Built over an old railroad bed, it runs from Gold Street to South Beech Street, a 2.4-mile wooded path that provides cyclists, joggers and pedestrians an alternate to South Willow Road, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city. The path also connects to Nutt Pond and Precourt Park.

There are plans to extend the trail south of Route 101, to Highland-Goffes Falls School.

Chief of Parks Peter Capano acknowledged that the graffiti detracts from the enjoyment of the trail. He said the city's graffiti truck has been deployed to paint over some of the markings.

“But the scale is so great,” he said. “We don't want to say we're overwhelmed, but if we tried to remove all the graffiti, we wouldn't be able to get anything else removed throughout the city,” said Capano. He added that he regularly bikes on the trail.

Capano is in good company. During the day, there's a steady stream of cyclists and pedestrians on the trail, despite the graffiti.

“It detracts from the experience, but it's still a pleasant way of getting from point A to point B,” Capano said.

The Manchester Police Department treats graffiti as a community policing problem.

The force's community police team does regularly check on the trail, although there haven't been any recent arrests connected to vandalism, according to Lt. Michael Hurley.

The community policing team patrols on mountain bikes.

Hurley said police can take more intensive action if they determine that the graffiti is a serious problem. “We'd talk to people in the area, that can view the bike path from where they live, and ask them to report any suspicious activities,” he said.

Hurley added that there's been a spate of graffiti and vandalism affecting the stores along South Willow and in the south Manchester area.

For his part, John Juza says he thinks that area young people are largely responsible for the graffiti. Just having a police car show up late at night on a semi-regular basis would help address the problem, he said.

“I think if the cops came down in a car with the blue lights running, they'd probably see kids running out of the woods,” he said.

Meanwhile, Juza said he and his wife will keep doing what they can to keep the area clean, picking up trash along the trail and the occasional errant shopping cart.

“I don't understand. You finish your drink and then toss it on the ground? For me, that's having no respect for mother earth,” he said.

tseifer@unionleader.com