By Scott D. Johnston
Ah Spring, a season that brings rebirth, new life, new energy and dreams, when one’s thoughts inevitably turn to… the collections, accumulations, inundations and just plain piles of broken, worn out, obsolete, unneeded, unsightly and just plain unwanted stuff that slowly but surely takes over our garages, sheds, closets, spare rooms and just plain space.
Just over 400 Ocean Shores residents heeded nature’s call to “get rid of that junk” as the City Public Works Department hosted a Spring Cleanup, May 2-4 at the city yard on Canal Drive.
Street Department Crew Chief John Wagner said 356 loads were dropped off, with volumes ranging from car trunks through a lot of pickup trucks to some trailers and bigger box trucks. The city offered pickup service for residents who were unable to do their own hauling, amounting to 46 more loads.
That added up to seven containers of general trash at 40 cubic yards each, plus about half a container of recyclable cardboard. Wagner said the annual cleanup event also collected six dump truck loads of scrap metal. A five person crew staffed the project, with two of them moving back to other work as demand ebbed and flowed.
The typical assortment that comes in for this event is heavy on old mattresses, flower pots, worn out sofas, chairs and recliners, dead TV sets and all manner of metal that has lost the struggle against the area’s slightly salty sea air. But some interesting, sometimes useful items come along to prove the old trash or treasure adage.
“The water department got a nice barbecue grill,” Wagner said, noting that “a pretty good grill comes in almost every year.”
The most unusual item? This year it’s a planter that’s a three-foot-tall bass, it’s large mouth open wide.
Cleanup roundup
Truckloads of roadside trash also were hauled off this past weekend in a city-wide cleanup sponsored by the Ocean Shores Block Watch Group, organized by Molly High, Randy Peck, and Donna Mae Clubb.
The last weekend of April also marked the annual Coastal Cleanup sponsored by CoastSavers.
Jon Schmidt of CoastSavers called the effort “a great success. Very similar numbers to last year, over 1,000 volunteers removed more than 20 tons of debris from 60 beaches.”
In Grays Harbor County: 45 volunteers checked in at Chance a la Mer beach approach, 34 at Ocean City, 25 at Pacific Beach State Park.
More than 100 helped clean the beach south of Point Grenville.
“Some students looking for volunteer hours, some tribal members and a large church group from Redeemers Lutheran Church in Seattle removed more than 5 tons from that one beach,” Schmidt said.
“We had to order an additional dumpster to level off the first one so it could be transported.”
Folks who missed the opportunity to participate in the cleanups can look forward to the International Coastal Cleanup in September.
Ocean Shores City Councilman Jon Martin commended the city’s Public Works Department for helping with both the city-wide and roadside cleanups: “I’m always amazed by the volunteers we have in the city to do that.”
