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Sunday, November 7, 1999 Today
was the big day! After weeks of planning, organizing, soliciting donations, etc.
The “Lost Coast 4x4’s” members met at Fernbridge at 8AM to set up
for the 9AM start of the River Bar clean up. I
can’t begin to list the names of the members who worked to put all of this
together. Most of the members
played some part in it, such as letter writing, contacting the newspapers and TV
stations, collecting donations, bringing trailers, barbecue grills, gloves,
backhoe/loaders, arranging for pick-up of tires, batteries, metal, etc.
I’ll just say that it was truly a joint effort by the club and
community! I
will try to get a list of the donors to add to the end of this story, because
without them, this clean up would not have been possible.
I also want to note that the TV coverage from channel 3 & 6 was
excellent. The Humboldt Beacon gave a big advance notice of the clean up
and the Humboldt Times-Standard gave a small one.
I think the Ferndale Enterprise was also involved, but I haven’t seen
that yet. Now on to the actual
clean up! We started out by cleaning under the bridge approach (Fernbridge) what a mess! I think people have been dumping their stoves, refrigerators, roofing, cars, animal carcasses and everything else you can think of, under this bridge approach for many years. With all the people, loaders, log skidder and plenty of garbage sacks, we managed to clean it in a couple of hours. We made stacks of metal, tires, batteries, glass and other stuff that could be compacted.
After
cleaning under the bridge, we spread out on the river bar with vehicles and
trailers and proceeded to clean along the river and riverbank.
We stacked all the wood in an open spot and set it ablaze, leaving people
there to keep an eye on it. Meanwhile,
a group of people with vehicles and trailers went to Grizzly Bluff to start
cleaning up and there is really a mess there!
We managed to make a small impression there with about ten trailer loads
taken, but there is still a lot of work to do there. About
12:30 PM, we started gathering back at the bridge, where the cooks (Lost Coast
Members) had tables of food and hamburgers were being barbecued.
After a well-earned meal, we had a raffle for everyone who had signed the
sign-up sheet and received his or her free ticket.
The weather did wait until this time to start raining on us, so we agreed
to call it quits and start packing up. Some
of the group who didn’t work too hard decided to go play on the freshly
cleaned river bar. Just kidding,
guys and gals! Everyone worked hard
and would have probably tossed anyone in the river that dared to drop a gum
wrapper!. I’m
not kissing up, but I would like to say, I don’t think I have ever worked with
a more eager, willing and ambitious bunch of people than we had at the clean up
today. We even had some volunteers
(Tom & Pat Charley) that came down from Blue Lake to help.
Congratulations to all! Jim Boyett
As
a follow up to the above story, the Times-Standard ran some photo’s of the
clean up on their front page.
As
I noted, both TV Stations (KIEM & KVIQ) ran good stories and pictures of the
clean up. CalTrans has agreed to
install “Dumping Prohibited” signs under the bridge. Once
again I'd like to thank
the
sponsors, donors and contributors for the 1st annual River Bar Clean
Up.
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