By: Claire Tribble
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of working with an amazing young lady from Athens Bible School, Kate Hargrave. Kate is a senior and reached out as a part of her Youth Leadership Development Program. These Youth Leaders reached out to different nonprofits to plan and schedule a volunteer event according to the program’s requirements. Kate chose her location — New Bethel Road in Elkmont. We parked at JD Adams Drive and worked our way back towards Sandlin Road, a whole 0.6 miles.
I hadn’t ridden down New Bethel Road in a while, and I had forgotten that the 0.6-mile stretch was LOADED with litter. It took us every bit of the three hours Kate planned to make it back to Sandlin Road. When we started, Kate, her dad, and I grabbed about five bags each. For some crazy reason, we thought that would be plenty to get the litter picked up. We made so many trips back to the truck for more bags. It was awful, everywhere you looked there was something. We know we left a lot because the ditches were full of leaves and pinecones that hid the litter. When we counted bags, there were 37 FULL bags. Keep America Beautiful averages bags of litter at 20 pounds. That’s roughly 740 pounds in 0.6 miles.
Since most of the leaves on the trees and brush have died back, you could see the big stuff. The kind of stuff that it took an effort to get out and dump where it would normally be hidden. We pulled a set of refrigerator/freezer doors, tires, a flat-screen television, a couple of paint cans, and an aquarium out to the side of the road. I’d estimate this added at least another 100 pounds, making the total somewhere around 850 pounds.
I’d heard that New Bethel Road is covered in litter from end to end, and I believe it. We had so many cars slow down to thank us for what we were doing. We usually get that when we are working, but this time it was close to 75% of the cars that passed. Saturday was a little different from some cleanups that we do because it was Commissioner Daryl Sammet’s funeral. Normally, we would have a dump trailer to load up, or even the crew from the district running the roads to load our bags for us. With all that was going on, Chairman Collin Daly and Commissioner Derrick Gatlin offered to help us, it would just be Sunday afternoon before they could get there. After Commissioner Sammet’s funeral service had ended, Collin made his way to New Bethel Road and some wonderful person (whom we hope sees this) had already picked up all the bags. We don’t know who to thank exactly, but we are grateful!
If you know Kate, make sure to tell her how awesome she really is. We can’t thank her enough! She made the plan, did the work, inspired others to volunteer, and she inspired us to continue down New Bethel Road. If the spirit moves you to volunteer, keep a watch on our Facebook page over the next few weeks and months, because we’re going back to New Bethel Road.
By: Claire Tribble – Executive Director
Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful
