Yumans take pride in beautifying community

  One person can accomplish a lot. But a group of people can do much more, especially when it is in a volunteer effort to beautify the city they call home.

  Many Yuma residents have donated their time, efforts and often materials as part of the national partnership program, Take Pride in America, which is aimed at increasing volunteer service on America's public lands, says Jack Simes, who has organized the volunteers in area cleanup efforts.

  Each individual effort has left the city of Yuma and outlying areas cleaner, safer and free of unnecessary debris or trash during a number of Take Pride-sponsored events.

  "The Yuma community has really pitched in this past year to help abate illegal dumping throughout Yuma County," Simes said.

  "We still have a long way to go but we've made significant progress to restore many natural desert settings along the river corridor and its nearby sites to near pristine riparian settings again."

  Simes said some of the people who have helped make that possible are:

  - Marian Easterday with the city of Yuma Clean and Beautiful Commission has collaborated with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Boy Scouts. Easterday helped organize the 2007 National Public Lands Day cleanup, an effort that brought together 233 volunteers who picked up 38.44 tons of trash, plus 161 tires that were recycled along with metal that was also collected.

  - Doug Thompson, a Yuma High School teacher who brought out 37 students of from his school for a trash cleanup from the desert area along County 19th Street earlier this year. That event saw more than 100 tons collected on the first day along with 1,723 tires collected.

  - Later an additional 299.4 tons were collected with the help of Mike Eslinger, an employee of the Yuma County Juvenile Justice Center, and the youth probation community restitution initiative he's managing there.

  "I was approached by three probation officers: Yezenia Garcia, Namaan Struck and Henry Gonzalez about having 12 of their assigned probationers participating in a community service project during spring break," Eslinger said.

  "In addition to the three previously mentioned probation officers and 12 juveniles that were supervised by them, there were four community restitution officers: Rachel DaSilva, Hector Gonzalez Jr., Guillermo Gaton and Roberto Romero that provided supervision to the 21 juveniles already assigned to participate in the Community Restitution Program during the dates.

  "Their efforts produced 372 hours of community service hours performed by seven officers of the court and 33 juveniles over a two-day period. The cleanup covered approximately 50 acres of land at which 182 tires and 7 tons of refuse were collected. Based on the minimum wage rate of $6.75 per hour the monetary value of this project was $2,511, a direct savings to the U.S. government," Eslinger said.

 - Joe Lopez, operations manager with Allied Waste, and the company have for more than a decade donated all container pull fees and have hauled hundreds of tons of trash to proper landfills.

  "I grew up in Yuma, born and raised," Lopez said. "I take pride in my hometown and we make every effort to do the right thing in our community. We donate our assistance in a lot of these cleanup efforts. We stepped up and gave our donations of service because we  feel we need to come together as a community, to help the community."

 - Liberty Motor Sports and Louie Hirth have donated Rangers, an all-terrain vehicles that greatly help haul out tires and other large debris items, like car parts, boxes and even boat parts during area cleanups.

 - David Gardner and Mark Stewart have been on tire patrol for several area cleanups over the past years. Simes said, "They do it with a passion and have collected thousands of tires as a result, along with pulling trash bags and other large debris items when called on."

 - Brett Bybee with the Boy Scouts has had a lot of Scouts in his district doing their "good turn" in support of the area cleanups, according to Simes. Bybee has also participated in cleanups by himself. He has driven loaned Rangers to pick up tires, trash bags and other large debris.

  "Brett's a great role model for our area youth," Simes said.

  - Ron Morfin, with the Bureau of Land Management, recently conducted a Take Pride cleanup at the Gila confluence. It collected over 19.6 tons of trash, removed 80 tires and several quarts of oil, as well discarded batteries from the area with the help of 25 volunteers.

  - The Yuma Irrigation District helped the BLM with the confluence cleanup twice this past year.

  - Yuma County Water  Users, Tom Davis, helped Reclamation at the National Public Lands Day and County 19th cleanups.

  "When you combine volunteers with the heavy equipment donated and other support equipment like the Rangers from Liberty Motor Sports, your event results are significant.

  "In bringing nature back in harmony with its environment, it doesn't get any better than that," Simes said.

  To volunteer efforts with Take Pride In America, visit www.takepride.gov.

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Stefani G. Soucy can be reached at ssoucy@yumasun.com or 539-6857.