Hundreds of volunteers gather in Eagle County to clean up trash along the highways
Annual gathering described as on of the Eagle River Valley's best community events
Madison Rahhal/Courtesy photo-1
Hundreds of volunteers got out and cleaned up trash along the roadways of Eagle County on Saturday.
The annual Community Pride Highway Cleanup is put on by the Eagle River Coalition, and attracts teams of volunteers throughout the valley.
While it’s mostly local volunteers who join in, the event attracts some out-of-town families as well, like the Vogels, of Denver, who wanted to participate with their 5-year-old twins, Emilia and Jack.
“We drove up last year and saw everyone and were like ‘what is going on?'” Amy Vogel said on Saturday. “So when we found out what it was we thought we should do it next year.”
Part of the purpose of the highway cleanup — and the reason it’s hosted by the Eagle River Coalition — is because a lot of the trash that is strewn along the roadways in the spring will end up in the waterways later this year if it isn’t cleaned up. Amy Vogel said her kids already noticed that fact and headed down toward the banks of the Eagle River to gather some of their items.
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“We wanted to keep them away from the roads anyway, so we ended up walking along the river for a bit,” she said.
Many groups are part of a local team, often led by the business that they work for, but the Vogels were randomly assigned to the town of Minturn team, which cleaned up Highway 24 from Meadow Mountain into the town of Minturn.
Mike Balster, of Gypsum, was also assigned to Minturn’s team, and said his friend who lives in Avon, also a free agent, was assigned to Eagle.
“We passed each other on the highway this morning,” he said.
Many who volunteered said they enjoy participating in the event not just for the satisfaction of seeing the roads cleaned up, but for the community aspect of getting together with their friends and neighbors on a Saturday.
“It’s really one of the best community events we have in the valley,” said Jonathan Best, with team 6 West in Edwards.
6 West is a group of apartments located along Highway 6 in Edwards. 6 West cleanup team leader Josie Haxton said a lot of the trash her team found was revealing of not just a litter problem in the valley, but of an altogether different issue.
“One of our dumpsters wasn’t bear proofed,” she said. “So the bear was taking the bags of trash into the national forest and opening them up, and leaving behind all this trash that we collected today.”
That was last fall, but the snow fell after that and buried the trash. 6 West has since received dumpsters that are more bear resistant, but the trash from the previous dumpster was still strewn about the complex.
“We filled several garbage bags with trash from the bear,” she said.
Haxton said her team also found a lot of large items that were discarded incorrectly, perhaps due to the fact that they were hard to dispose of.
“Couch cushions, broken lamps, side tables — with a lot of people moving in and out of here, sometimes this stuff gets left behind,” she said. “So it’s nice to see it disposed of properly.”
