Arley community cleanup Saturday

ARLEY       -  The Town of Arley is taking a community-wide stance against litter, not only by cleaning the town up, but by organizing a prevention program for Saturday, April 23.
The community is encouraged to join members of the Arley Women’s Club and Rotary Club of Smith Lake at 8:30 a.m. at the parking lot of Meek Baptist Church on County Road 77.  Participants will be divided into teams that will be assigned specific areas to clean up.
“Some people will clean up their local roads and that’s fine,” Rotary Club of Smith Lake Treasurer Wade Weeks said. “Others will show up and say, ‘where do you want me to go?’”
Groups will be given reflective vests and bags to put trash in. These items are being provided by Alabama People Against a Littered State or ALPALS, as well as Keep Alabama Beautiful, organizers said.
Orange cones will be placed at the areas where the clean up is taking place, according to organizers.
The Arley Fire Department will provide a first aid station, if needed, at the fire station on County Road 77.   People are welcome to stop by the first aid station to receive water to cool off if temperatures are hot, or to address any incidents that could arise.
All pick up areas will be planned with the safety of the public in mind, organizers added.
This visible clean-up effort is an initiative that came about as the result of a grassroots effort, members of both organizations agreed.  The process of picking up litter along the area roadways  has been an ongoing effort of the women’s club the past several years.  That effort, however, has now received a boost, in order to become a widespread awareness and prevention program, noted Weeks.
“We wanted to be a part of the effort, too,” he said. “So we, over the last year, have done some clean ups, two or three hours during the week.”
Since Renew Our Rivers has become a widely attended clean-up of Smith Lake itself, the focus for this event instead was placed on the sides of the roadways, Weeks continued.
“We all have done our own individual things,” he stated. “One of the things we think we are missing is a cohesive community-wide acknowledgement that we have a litter problem.  We need to find a way to either fix what we’ve got, but also prevent it from happening.”
This resulted in the partnership of the AWC and RCOSL by forming a committee to bring the community together from Duncan Bridge northward.
Arley Fire Chief James Rickett reminded people to be cautious when they pick up discarded items, as some could be dangerous drugs or even volatile methamphetamine labs, which are often discarded on the side of the road.
“A lot of times it will be something like a jar or bottle, a plastic bottle and it will be burned,” Rickett explained. “Don’t touch it. It just takes a grain of that to get in your skin and you are out.  You’ll be lying in a ditch.”
One organizer recalled he was picking up a bottle during a clean up when it exploded upon grabbing and moving it. No injuries were reported.
Participants will be protected by wearing gloves and having pickers to retrieve the litter, so it will not be touched with their hands, they said.
“The drugs and trash on the sides of the roads are pitiful,” Rickett pointed out.
Beverly Kelly of the AWC stressed that participants, before leaving out from the church parking lot April 23, will be given a list of safety instructions to follow during the clean up.
Although specific areas have not been announced, organizers said a six to seven mile radius from Duncan Bridge to the center of Arley will be covered, as well as six to seven miles in different directions from the town--all in the most littered areas, organizers said.
After picking up at their designated areas, all participants will return at 11:30 a.m. to the church parking area.
A dumpster will be provided by Hyche Landfill, where bags of collected trash will be placed then hauled to the landfill, organizers said.
Those who have participated in the clean up will be treated to hot dogs grilled at the church.
“We want the community to come out and really keep our little piece of heaven here in Arley and surrounding counties beautiful,” Kelly stated.
Rotary Club President Mark Pafford hopes the roadways will not only be cleaned but the community educated about the litter and its costs to the community.
“Litter causes litter,” Pafford noted.
Plans are, Pafford added, to make such a clean-up a quarterly event or maybe an introduction to an educational program.
“We are going to see how this first one goes,” he said. The program, he explained, will be expanded by organizers going into schools to educate them on the dangers of littering and hopefully introduce a beautification program.
“We want to really get the public aware that we’ve got a problem and let’s clean it up,”  Pafford said.  “Our goal is to clean up Alabama.  Quit messing with Alabama.”
 Pafford added that people see trash on the sides of the road, but mow over the trash, scattering it into tiny pieces that litter a much larger area.
“You take one Styrofoam® cup and mow it, then you have 100 little pieces of Styrofoam®,” said Pafford.
“It points to a bigger picture in our lifestyle,” added Amy Ackley, a member of both AWC and Rotary.  “Decades and decades ago, we used to use a lot of the things we had instead of having single-use plastics. “Now, we’ve gotten to where everything is so disposable.  Everything that is in a package is eventually going to be trash somewhere.  It’s either going to be trash on the sides of our roads or trash in our landfill, where people can recycle it, depending on what’s available to them.”
Those who can help with the clean-up are urged to contact Weeks at (904) 403-7225 or Pafford at (817) 909-4913.
 In case of inclement weather, the community clean up will be Saturday, April 30, according to organizers.