District Outreach

Community service project is a success for all involved

by Cheryl Jarrett, Huntington County SWCD

On May 4, 2009, SWCD Chair Kyle Lund and Cheryl Jarrett, Huntington County SWCD Office Manager, met with the Huntington County Commissioners and gave a report on Huntington County Soil and Water Conservation District projects. 

At that time Commissioners asked if the District could assist the Solid Waste Management Office and the County Highway Department on a project to clean up trash dumped along the Blue Star Highway (old U.S. 24) at the Huntington/Wabash County line. The Huntington County SWCD saw an opportunity and accepted the offer and also told the Commissioners they would seek additional partners to assist with the project. 

Cheryl enlisted the aid of her husband, Mick, a teacher for the Machine Trades Class at Huntington North High School, about getting his class to help with the project.  Mr. Jarrett likes to do a community service project with his class each year if possible. 

With the school administration's approval to do the project and permission from parents, classes came out in their session time, one in the morning and one in the afternoon for two hours each. The bulk of the trash was picked up on the first day. The second day, students finished the clean up by picking up glass and glass bottles. At least 90 five-gallon buckets of bottles were picked up.

The Solid Waste Management Office was grateful for the assistance. They said what was accomplished in two days would have taken them weeks to clean up. A large roll-off dumpster was completely full and many tires were loaded into a dump truck. The highway will have a barricade put up and the property will revert back to the landowner.

Several of the youth were not happy with this news . . . learning that people are able to trash the rivers and land like that. One youth com-mented about seeing the movie Earth and stated "it makes him mad to see all the dumping and how people treat our environment."

Hopefully, the students will take this to heart after having to clean up someone else’s trash and help take better care of the environment themselves.

To learn more about this project, contact the Huntington County SWCD at 260.356.6816, ext. 3.

>> Click here to find out more about Indiana's SWCDs