Huge undertaking
Volunteer group prepares for biggest cleanup project yet
Volunteers with the group #1pileatatime are planning to start a multi-day project this Saturday to remove truckloads of trash from hillside properties near the Lowe’s Home Improvement big-box store off Old Wards Ferry Road and above Highway 108.
Trisha Revord and her family friend Mackenzie Anderson visited the area Thursday morning to show the size of their task. They are raising more than $24,000 to rent four big rigs with trailers and a Bobcat front loader; to pay about $11,000 in dump fees; and to pay for water and food for volunteers over four days on three different weekends to accomplish their goal.
Homeless people have camped out in the area for 15 to 20 years, so the encampments predate the opening of the Lowe’s in 2010, Revord, 44, said Thursday.
On multiple properties near the Lowe’s, Revord and Anderson estimate they and other #1pileatatime volunteers will try to move more than 400 cubic yards of refuse, which includes tents and dismantled structures, discarded
clothing, rusted barbecues, blankets, sleeping bags, mattresses, tarps, produce bins, shopping carts, plastic bags, mop buckets, beer bottle caps, over-the-counter medication containers, syringes, and human waste.
“Tomorrow, we're paying for a U-haul to help a homeless man and woman move out,” Revord said. “We want to be clear we don't have anything against the homeless. We've been getting some backlash comments about the homeless. We want to be caring and compassionate about what we're doing up here.”
Revord and Anderson spoke Thursday morning with Jonathan David Harkrader, a homeless individual who has been camping near the Lowe's. Harkrader had a pry bar in hand and said he was using it to take apart at least one temporary structure.
Anderson, 24, stopped at one especially filthy former camping area and moved her hands while she spoke passionately about the need for cleaning up trash in Tuolumne County.
“It's about protecting our beautiful nature, our natural resources, the environment,” Anderson said. “It's beautiful up here and there shouldn't be trash all over the ground, down in the gullies, even in the creek. We need to protect nature and our waterways.”
An unnamed creek was flowing below the Lowe's and a set of railroad tracks near the Lowe's parking lot. Trash and refuse next to the creek showed some people use soap to try to wash up in the creek. There was a bucket in the creek and some clothing on one side. Other discarded waste next to the creek included a Sara Lee pumpkin pie box, and a pie pan half-full of uneaten orange goop.
“We just want to clean it up and restore the natural beauty here,” Anderson said. “Obviously it's pretty here and it's natural and it's historic.”
The unnamed creek flows downhill in the same general direction as the Jamestown Ditch to the north and Sullivan Creek to the south. It was not clear Thursday how polluted and contaminated the unnamed creek has become over the past two decades.
Closer to Lowe's, it was obvious some trash in the area comes from the Lowe's parking lot itself, which is paved, covers an area at least as large as an American football field, and has to drain somewhere whenever it rains hard.
Revord and her husband, Jason Revord, started organizing volunteers online to clean up trash at illegal dump sites — in the Sonora area, outside Sonora in county areas, and near the Stanislaus National Forest — in January. She estimates #1pileatatime volunteers have completed eight to 10 different cleanups on recent weekends. They typically get 20 volunteers minimum on a specific cleanup project.
Trisha Revord and Anderson expect they will have at least 20 volunteers a day for their cleanup near the Lowe's.
Because there are some biohazard wastes present in the multiple trash piles and dumps near Lowe's, all volunteers must be age 16 or older, and those age 16 to 18 must have a waiver form signed by a parent or guardian, Revord said Thursday.
Scheduled times for the cleanup near Lowe's are 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. this Saturday; 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on March 13; and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on March 27 and 28.
Volunteers can expect to be bagging trash this Saturday and next Saturday. The weekend of March 27-28 will be designated haul days, when the rented big rig trailers will stage at Lowe's and near Highway 108, and volunteers will work to move tons of bagged refuse to the big rig trailers for transport to legal dump sites.
It took about an hour Thursday to walk around the edges of areas where a lot of the planned cleanup will take place. Revord and Anderson were not intimidated one bit by any of what they saw and pointed out and talked about Thursday.
“We knew about this mess when we chose to do it,” Revord said. “We want to challenge ourselves.”
“If we can do those other projects, we know we can do this,” Anderson said. “Once this is done, we'll feel like we can do anything.”
The Facebook group “1pileatatime” had 1,000 members as of Thursday afternoon.