EDGEMONT – The Edgemont Community Foundation held a community-wide clean up event on Saturday, April 25. During a recent city council meeting, Kerry Barker and Shane Miller, foundation board members, asked the city to offset some of the costs. The city agreed to cover $1,000 toward landfill fees. With loads costing an average of $55-60 per ton, the $1,000 would cover about 16 tons. A grand total of 22 tons of garbage and rubble were collected in about 3 hours.
The city owns a garbage truck, and city maintenance employee Kyle Kaiser operated it with a small army of volunteers to help load it. They collected and carried away approximately 6 tons of garbage. Foundation and community members provided four additional dump trailers, two utility trailers, two skid-steers, roll-off dumpsters and a lot of manual labor.
“The foundation had done a few localized clean-up projects recently and had an outpouring of support from community members who wanted to participate,” said Miller. “We wanted to have an event that the whole town could get involved in.”
Residents set out appliances, furniture, tires and other unwanted items at the curb or in alleys, and teams of foundation members and volunteers with pickups and trailers made their way through town, hauling everything to the landfill.
Over 50 community members showed up to clean up.
The Cheyenne Rangers, Edgemont’s 4H club, walked from Dollar General, down Highway 471 down Mainstreet past the railroad tracks, and picked up garbage along the roadside. After that, they raked, weeded and spruced up the Orchard of Hope in preparation for summer.
“It was a grand day,” said Barker.
While they were not planning on picking up green waste, volunteers ended up hauling nearly 10 trailer loads of sticks and branches. “We saw a need to haul the branches, and we had the manpower and equipment to take care of it,” said Miller.
CLEAN UP, page A5 Lunch was served for volunteers at the St. James Parish Center. Linda Tidball, foundation board member, came up with the idea. From there it snowballed, with community members bringing hot dogs, sloppy joes, chips and desserts, with lemonade, coffee and hot chocolate.
Mayor Rheta Reagan came out to help as well. “We have a great community that comes together and helps out people in need. The camaraderie was amazing.”
“It was a fantastic day. I enjoyed being out there helping and will do it again when the time comes,” said Reagan. “I’m really grateful for the foundation, and how they have stepped up and what they have done so far.”
The foundation would like to make this an annual, or semi-annual event. In the meantime, residents are encouraged to maintain and continue working on their properties.
“If people keep cleaning up properties, and have stuff to get rid of, the city does offer two clean-up vouchers per resident to be used any time throughout the year,” said Reagan.