Sixty-three kilometres of trash
More than 150 volunteers to clean up litter along Ingraham Trail next week
Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Friday, May 30, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Many of the coffee cups, cigarette packs, beer cans and broken appliances strewn along the Ingraham Trail this past winter will not be there after next week, thanks to more than 150 volunteers.
Lenore deJong cleans up trash along the Ingraham Trai. She is the volunteer co-ordinator of the annual Ingraham Trail volunteer cleanup project, which has run for about 15 years. More than 150 volunteers clean up kilometres six through 69 of the trail around the first week of June. This year, it is scheduled for the weekend of June 7. The Department of Transportation provides about 300 garbage bags. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo |
For about the 15th year, area cabin owners and others who appreciate the wilderness along that road will gather to pick up a year's worth of trash from 63 kilometres of ditches from June 6 to 8.
The GNWT Department of Transportation donates approximately 300 heavy-duty garbage bags and more than 100 recycling bags to the project. A crew from the department travels back and forth along the road throughout the weekend to retrieve the bags once they are full.
Couples or families adopt a kilometre of the trail to clean up, starting at kilometre six just before the Yellowknife River and extending to kilometre 69 where the road ends at Tibbitt Lake.
Project co-ordinator Lenore deJong and her husband Simon deJong are responsible for kilometre 28.
"People do the same kilometre every year," she said, adding the initiative represents a lesson for children to leave the land in a better state than they find it in.
Unfortunately, it is a lesson that escaped some older generations.
"There's all sorts of things that get dumped along the highway that shouldn't be there," she said, such as microwaves, televisions, tires and even an occasional boat or snow machine abandoned during the winter.
The prevalence of beer cans is disturbing, deJong said, because it suggests many residents are drinking and driving on the trail.
In addition to cleaning the roadside ditches, some volunteers tidy up access roads and parking lots along the trail, such as at Pontoon Lake and Cassidy Point.
Dot Van Vliet, her husband Kevin Hodgins, their daughter Laura Hodgins, 15, and Laura Agosti, 17, an exchange student from Brescia, Italy, plan to clear garbage from the driveway leading into the Yellowknife River rest area on their way to their cabin on River Lake next week. It is the family's third year participating in the cleanup.
About 95 per cent of the trash they find consists of coffee cups from Tim Hortons and McDonald's, according to Van Vliet.
"It really irritates me. I just think we're in a beautiful, pristine part of the world and if you let it go, the garbage starts to build up and it just escalates. You have to keep on it all the time," she said. "We're happy to do our part. I think if everybody picked up some garbage every day, it would be a lot cleaner city. I try to pick up something every day."
Jamie Bastedo and his wife Brenda Hans, and their daughters Nimisha Bastedo, 22, and Jaya Bastedo, 24, clean up an area just east of the Yellowknife River bridge.
"We've adopted that stretch of road over the years and every time I drive by it I have a fond connection to that part kilometre," Bastedo said.
Bastedo, a professional naturalist, said he has seen the amount of trash diminish in the past decade due to plastic bag levies and recycling programs, but alcohol and coffee containers and cigarettes remain a big problem.
"I don't understand littering. It just seems so thoughtless and kind of crude. It's an embarrassing thing that we humans do," he said.
The group receives lots of support from the community, deJong said.
Tli Cho Landtran donates an electronic roadside sign to warn drivers to be aware of volunteers working on the trail that weekend and the Yellowknife Association for Community Living in the Abe Miller Building serves as a distribution depot for garbage bags in the days leading up to the cleanup.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources also establishes a check stop on the trail to remind drivers about fishing regulations during the weekend.
If cabin owners in other areas of the region are interested in starting a similar cleanup project, deJong said she would be happy to share information.
