The third annual Thomas City Cleanup hit the streets to spruce up the city by collecting trash. New Historic Thomas and AmeriCorps Volunteer Natalia Dutt organized the cleanup.
“Every year the AmeriCorp who is serving is in charge of picking the date and pulling it together,” Dutt said. Dutt said organizing the event is simple; hoping for people to show up is the hard part.
Just over 20 volunteers helped collect litter on Saturday morning, including many families and students from Mountain Laurel Learning Cooperative. Right when the cleanup began at 10 a.m., the clouds broke, allowing splashes of sunshine down on the area for the first time in days.
West Virginia Department of Highways donated trash bags and grabbers. “We usually get a lot more from them than we need, which is nice,” Mayor Matt Quattro said.
Volunteers estimated there was less trash to pick up than previous years. “We think it’s kind of a snowball effect that people are seeing that we are trying to keep it clean, so they are making a more conscious effort,” Dutt said.
“This year it’s a really light load,” Sara Litzau. In years’ past, Litzau helped organize the event, as a joint effort between Mountain Laurel Learning Cooperative and New Historic Thomas.
Thomas residents Shaena Crossland and her daughter, Vivian, were out doing their civic duty together. “This is actually Vivian’s and my first year. Our schedules have always conflicted, so we’re excited to be here,” Crossland said. “I think it’s important to show your young ones on the good feeling of working together with your community.”
If you walked Front Street on Saturday morning, you were sure to see children excitedly running toward trash when spotted, even venturing into the less than desirable places, like culverts and drainage ditches to extract the harder to reach trash.
For the past three years, the cleanup event is strategically placed before Art Spring Festival. But that’s not the only reason the cleanup is scheduled for mid-May. “There are two reasons: one because the snow if off the ground. You can’t pick up trash until the snow’s off the ground,” Mayor Quattro said.
Once all the trash is collected and bagged, City of Thomas employees transport it to the dump.
