Kiwanians lead cleanup effort
The city of El Centro has big plans for Adams Park, installing an aquatic center that will cost the city more than $12 million.
While the project moves along, Adams Park has slowly died off — literally — thanks to a mandated reduction in water usage by the state last summer and the city’s decision to not maintain an area that is scheduled for construction. Groundbreaking is scheduled for March with the project still in the initial stages.
The park is full of dead trees that have become an eyesore so the El Centro Kiwanis Club decided to act.
The service club, after a few months of planning and with the support from a handful of businesses, cut down eight trees at the park in blistering heat Saturday.
“We were up 40 feet in the air taking down these big Eucalyptus trees,” said Kiwanis Executive Board Member and El Centro Councilman Jason Jackson.
He said the idea first arose after the summer last year, when a young girl made a presentation to the city’s council.
“She made a very articulate, professional Power Point presentation,” Jackson, who was mayor at the time, said.
The city looked into the price of removing the dead trees
— it would have cost about $90,000.
Knowing the area was set for construction anyway, the city decided not to follow through to save costs.
Jackson said he then looked toward civic groups to see if they could help. He was already a member with the Kiwanis club so the idea grew.
On Saturday, about 12 members gathered at the park at 5 a.m. for a day of hard labor. With chainsaws and other tools from KC Welding & Rentals, a boom lift from United Rentals and a waste dumper from CR& R Environment Services donated, the group cut down eight trees. The group stopped a little before noon with temperatures soaring over 100 degrees.
“It was some back-breaking work, but it was good to see … when we dropped a couple of those big trees, we were happy to see how much better it looked,” Jackson said.
Area residents and even the homeless noticed.
“We had compliments by some of the homeless and people that lived nearby,” Jackson said. “It’s definitely noticeable.”
There are still a handful of more trees the group wasn’t able to get to Saturday.
“We wished we could get the rest of those down, we just ran out of time and energy,” he said.
“But we’ll revisit it and try to come out here again and knock out the rest of them.”
He’s pretty sure another community effort will finish the job.
“It was a good community effort,” he said. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without United Rentals, KC Rentals and CR &R.”