Clean-Up Day draws residents to help beautify city, rural areas
Published Sunday, May 11, 2008
By 10 o’clock Saturday morning, the parking lot at Ken Kunkel Community Center was buzzing with volunteers who loaded big yellow trash bags with litter they found along Goldstream Road.
Nine miles to the southeast, at the state Department of Fish and Game offices, volunteer Alexis Runstadler handed out bags to a half-dozen people picking up trash along College Road.
And Edgar Miller, who was working with a group cleaning Farmers Loop, had discovered and trashed — to his disgust — a loaded baby diaper.
Saturday played host to Fairbanks’ annual spring Clean-Up Day, when countless volunteers chip in to rake up trash that has made its way to roadsides, parks and other public space throughout the winter.
September Laakso and Cathy Persinger helmed a mini-Clean-Up Day station from the downtown parking lot of Gambardella’s Pasta Bella restaurant. They handed out trash bags to volunteers and offered snacks and coffee.
“If you need another bag, we’re here. If you need a little coffee, we’re here,” said Persinger, who said two dozen people had stopped by as of 11 a.m. The regular event’s popularity led her to wonder if a pre-snowfall autumn cleanup event might help as well.
The Volunteers in Policing program, a nonprofit group that supplements public services for the official Fairbanks Police Department, scheduled its graffiti-fighting team to meet during this year’s Clean-Up Day.
The program’s graffiti busters say it’s critical to remove graffiti as quickly as possible to keep vandals from hitting the same place twice, a policy that falls in line with Saturday’s early spring counterattack. The team worked for close to an hour with a neighborhood-watch group to cover a swath of graffiti that appeared this winter at a bridge over the Chena River.
The graffiti stretched along a north-facing wall and on joists under the bridge. It had also somehow appeared on bridge pilings mid-river, so the group recruited kayakers Justin and Amanda Hemperly to paddle out with a long-handled paint roller to fix things up. The couple seemed surprised at the opportunity but were happy to help.
“We were just trying to get to the Pump House (Restaurant),” Justin Hemperly said.
The Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce, the United Way of the Tanana Valley, and a handful of businesses organize and sponsor the annual spring Clean-Up Day event. A variety of organizations — the Fairbanks Curling Club, Friends of Creamer’s Field, the Fairbanks North Star Borough — join families and individuals to clean up Fairbanks, Ester, North Pole and everywhere in-between.
“It’s families, it’s businesses, it’s neighbors. It’s people just getting out,” chamber president Jewelz Nutter said. “What Clean-Up Day does is let organizations and businesses form groups within themselves and become part of something bigger then themselves.”
Community Discussion
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Thank you everyone.
I must say I was overwhelmed by our communities response to clean up day! I think it was the best turnout ever. It's nice to see our fellow Fairbanksons showin their pride and compassion in volunteering. Thanks and GREAT job everyone!
It looks great.
Keep up the good work and don't forget to carry a trash bag with you this summer when you are out and about. It only takes a minute to set the example for others and will remind them how easy it is to spend a few minutes to leave public areas cleaner than they found them. It's a good habit to get kids into so they learn good stewardship.
ONAPA, you're right about getting kids into the habit. And it's so easy when they're young: finding garbage is like a treasure hunt.
It makes me sad, in a way, that my older daughter is now old enough to ride a bicycle. Now she moves too fast to pick up garbage.
But isn't it that way with most of us? Don't we move too fast in our cars to notice litter on the streets? And, even when we do notice, how many of us care to stop the car to pick something up? Almost none, I'd wager.
Good stewardship is easier when (1) we have enough meaningful destinations within walking distance that many people are out walking, and (2) we cease making places not worth giving a damn about -- for example, the Johansen Expressway and most of Peger Road. If we can make all of our places into places worth spending time, rather than automotive sewers, we'll have won most of the battle.
I agree with you Paul, but doesn't that make us the stuff going through the sewers? We sewer rats need to do a better job of securing our garbage until we get to a receptacle. Days like today, even the journey through the sewer is a pleasant place to spend time. By the way, I did slow the boat down enough to grab someone else's beer can out of the Chena yesterday. If it's yours and you want it back, drop me an e-mail.
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