Volunteers will come together Saturday for the second annual Pacific Parks Pickup, Trash Toss, Weed Wack and Ivy Pull – a community-wide cleanup effort in celebration of Earth Day.
Five Lower White River Valley community groups – Pacific Partnerships, Friends of the Lower White River, the White River Valley Lions Club, the Pacific Meadows Homeowners Association, and Pacific-Algona Scout Troop 835 – will team up with the Pacific Board of Park directors and the City of Pacific www.cityofpacific.com in the efforts.
Neighbors and friends are asked to meet at 10 a.m. at the Pacific-Algona Community Senior Center, 100 3rd Ave. SE, Pacific, to begin the project. Volunteers are asked to bring gloves and used plastic grocery bags.
From there, groups will head out to the City Park, city “pocket parks,” West Hill Passive Park, Pacific Meadows Wetlands restoration areas, and to the Interurban Trail. At 11 a.m., the trash weigh-in starts under the green canopy at the community center. Trash tally is expected to conclude at 12:20 p.m.
A volunteer appreciation lunch of “stone soup,” hot dogs, nachos, beverages and coffee will be provided at 12:30 p.m. in the East Room of the community center/gymnasium by Pacific Partnerships and the Pacific Park Board. Bring your travel mug or water bottle.
To join the lunch, please RSVP Glenda White at CollectDetect@comcast.net.
The event collected more than 700 pounds of trash last year, with J. Frank Hatten III collecting more than 400 pounds of trash.
Saturday’s added projects include the removal of invasive English ivy in a nature park, and follow-up weeding of last October’s Pacific Meadows Wetlands restoration planting.
Friends of the Lower White River will award first edition 2009 FLWR mugs or prints to volunteers. They will have limited quantities, reproduced from original art by Anita Lynn Landree.
Please contact Jeanne Fancher, FLWR, at 253-653-1000, for more information, or e-mail PacificNaturalist@clearwire.net.
Friends of the Lower White River is a local grassroots group founded in Pacific. Its mission is to preserve the health and biodiversity of the White River basin between Buckley and Sumner.
For more information, visit www.flwr.wetpaint.com.
