Keeping Moses Lake beautiful
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Chris Jimenez takes a break from picking up trash to show what he found – the head to the streetlight on the westbound I-90 on-ramp – during the annual citywide trash cleanup on Saturday.
MOSES LAKE — It’s amazing what you find when you start picking up trash.
“It’s a mess, though not as bad as the shore when they lowered the water table,” said Chris Jimenez as he stood amidst the sagebrush near the westbound on-ramp from West Broadway Avenue onto I-90.
At his feet was the head of a streetlamp — the streetlamp at that very intersection — that had somehow fallen into the brush.
“It was full of water when I found it,” he said.
Jimenez and his wife Diana, noticeable in their bright yellow-green vests, were the only folks out Saturday morning cleaning up at Broadway and I-90 as part of the Moses Lake citywide cleanup on Saturday. They said they would hit every corner of the interchange.
“We like to be a part of our community,” Diana said.
About a half-hour earlier, behind the Porterhouse Restaurant, people gathered to grab day-glo vests, giant trash bags, gloves, and marching orders for the clean-up.
“We’re going to try and go everywhere, but we’ll start on the main streets, Highway 17 and Broadway,” said Alan Heroux, one of the organizers of the cleanup. “Especially areas where the wind blows.”
According to Heroux, this is the 17th year for the city wide cleanup in Moses Lake. The first year folks gathered, Heroux said, they filled nearly two giant dumpsters with trash collected around Moses Lake.
“We’ve gotten better at getting the bigger stuff off public areas. Now, we focus on plastic bags, cans, anything that can fly out of a car, you name it,” Heroux said.
The citywide cleanup is organized by Vision 2020, a civic organization that arose from the city’s chamber of commerce and the business community to help make Moses Lake a more livable community, Heroux said.
Participants got a pair of gloves, a bright vest, two big trash bags, and the promise of lunch courtesy of Porterhouse.
And people gathered. Fifteen or so members of a group called “Man Up!” were putting on vests and getting instructions.
“When something needs to be done, we step up and do it,” said group member Josh Mosley.
And a bus full of students from Columbia Basin Job Corps arrived as well, to contribute their morning to cleaning up Moses Lake as they had with the lakeshore trash pickup earlier this year.
“This is pretty cool,” said Job Corps student Kennedy Coburn. “I like doing stuff like this.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.