Thanks to lake clean-up volunteers

The city of Moses Lake is blessed in a lot of ways, and one of those is the lake that it’s named for. Seen from above, it glitters like a jewel in the yellow-brown central Washington landscape. We spend our leisure time boating, fishing or swimming in it, or just walking alongside it. Plenty of cities are built on bodies of water, but few are as intertwined as our lake and city are.

So it was wonderful to see so many people – more than 200 – show up to take part in the annual spring shore clean-up on Saturday. The participants were a cross-section of our community: students, service clubs, churches and just plain folks. Together they gathered up the junk and trash that have accumulated while the lake’s level was lowered for winter. Volunteers walked through parts of the shore that often are overlooked, like the area behind the businesses on Stratford Road and Broadway Avenue, as well as more common areas like Blue Heron Park and the Alder Street Fill. They found bottles, cardboard, tires and piles of icky stuff nobody could even identify. When it was all finished, the volunteers sat down to a chili feed provided by their neighbors at the Moses Lake Irrigation and Rehabilitation District. The weather was drizzly and chilly, but that barely slowed down the army of cleaners as they filled sack after sack. Because in this town, we’re really proud of our lake.

That pride is one of the things that sets a town like Moses Lake apart, a sense of ownership about our public areas that you might not find in a larger, more impersonal city. It’s easy to say “Why doesn’t somebody do something about that?” It takes effort to step up and be that somebody. It takes even more when the job is gross and the weather is nasty and you’re not getting paid. (Except in chili.) On Saturday, we saw that character in abundance.

So we enthusiastically express our gratitude to the volunteers who came out to help make our lake look its beautiful best. And this summer, when we’re floating in it or watching the sun sparkle on it, we’ll be grateful again.

Thank you for loving our lake.

— Editorial Board