Johanna Pounds
Editorial Assistant
Northeast News

On Friday, March 15, many Northeast residents gathered to do another trash clean up effort in Kessler Park.

Community volunteers met at Gate 2 and gathered around a small hill to start the clean up. One resident described witnessing people dump entire trash bags in the area, supposedly due to delayed and inconsistent trash pick-up.

“Instead of waiting for the garbage truck, they’ll just dump whole trash bags from their house here.”

Several trash bags were found, containing plastic straws and old clothes placed in even larger clean up bags. One litterer was even dubbed “The Coors Light Guy,” as one of the most common trash items was boxes of glass Coors Light beer bottles. Some of the residents said that it was too common and too often found for it to be more than one person.

This cleanup was a community effort. Every time a new volunteer would come up, they would be greeted with cheers and hellos, as if that was where they were supposed to be all along.

The feeling of care and love for the park was palpable among everyone there.

For most, they just wanted to create a better community for everyone around them to live in.

When asked why it was so important to them, one resident said “I really think that making the neighborhood more beautiful will encourage more people to go outside and get healthy exercise. Which, in turn, will probably keep it more beautiful.”

Within the first half hour, there were already four cleanup bags filled with trash. New volunteers would note, as they came up the hill, how much better the area already looked. Jerusalem Farm’s volunteers have been clearing out the honeysuckle in the area as well, and residents are pleased with how beautiful the area is looking.