Annual Lake Ouachita Clean-up this Saturday

The annual Lake Ouachita Trash Clean-up will be held this Saturday, and one of the organizers said that they expect to remove between 2 and 3 tons of trash during the event.

Hosted by the Friends of Lake Ouachita, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lake Ouachita Field Office, Keep America Beautiful and Keep Arkansas Beautiful, the event will start around 7 a.m. and end around 11 a.m.

Jerry Shields, FOLO chairman, said he thinks around 50 people will participate in the cleanup this year.

The volunteers helping with the cleanup will meet at Tompkins Bend Campground, 15 Tompkins Bend Road, and Shields said that the participants will search the coves between Denby Point and Shangri La Resort.

Shields said that, in the past, the cleanup attempted to cover the entire lake.

“(We were) biting off a lot,” Shields said. He said that once they decided to focus on specific areas, they have been able to more thoroughly clean parts of the lake.

“Worked out really well,” he said.

The area they are looking at this year has around 9 miles of shoreline, Shields said. The reason that the cleanup is held at this time of year, he said, is because the lake is lower now, allowing more trash to be collected from the lake. He also said that this area has a lot of trash in it because rivers connect here, and winds blow in the direction of this area.

Lake Ouachita was at 568.42 feet above mean sea level on Thursday, which is around 9.5 feet below the full pool of 578 feet msl.

Two things Shields said that they are looking for are rugs and tires. He said that boat owners will often throw a rug or tires on a shore for their boats to push up against. These items can get left behind when the boater leaves.

Participants helping with the cleanup do not have to be members of FOLO. Shields said that they will have various groups helping like college students and Boy Scouts. In the past, they have had up to 300 people help, but Shields said that was when they were trying to tackle the entire lake. More recently they have averaged around 50 people.

“It’s amazing what 50 people can do,” Shields said, adding that they will remove up to 3 tons of trash.

Trash bags will be provided to volunteers. Shields said that after a bag is filled, the participants will leave the bag on the shore, and the Corps of Engineers will pick up the bags.

Shields said that efforts to keep the lake clean are important because, if the lake looks good, more tourists will visit the area. More tourists, Shields said, will bring more sales taxes to the county.

Saturday is also National Public Lands Day. A rain date of Oct. 12 is set in the case of inclement weather.