With Earth Day approaching on April 22, the third annual Great Middlesex Green Up started on Saturday, March 29, with trash on 20 miles of roadways being collected. This is only the beginning. Teams from Laneview to Deltaville are organizing, and it’s not too late to join in by volunteering with more than a dozen existing teams.
Kicking off the countywide clean up last Saturday was the annual clean-up volunteer and community leader Tom Maffey and his Old Virginia Street Team.
Also on Saturday, Team Kiwanis cleaned up Warner Road from U.S. Route 17 to Old Virginia Street. They had 12 folks participate and picked up 20 bags of litter.
Team Providence, led by Carol DuBois, cleaned up Providence Road in Deltaville and the Bland Point area. They had 16 volunteers and cleaned up 12 bags of litter.
By the numbers, 45 volunteers collected 125 bags of litter from 20 miles of roadways.
Momentum
This is the third year the group has cleaned up Old Virginia Street. “This year we were able to gather enough volunteers to clean the 5 miles from Lord Mott Road to Route 17,” said organizer Tom Maffey. The team had five trucks with three people on each, each team covered one side of the road for a mile stretch and then turned around and covered the same mile on the other side of the road; so each team did two miles and the team covered a total of 10 miles. They picked up 89 bags of trash, along with other assorted large items like tires, buckets, lumber and car parts.
“It was great to see folks take pride in their community and dedicate some time and effort to keeping it clean,” said Tom Maffey. “We will do it again next year.”
Join in
Keep Middlesex Beautiful encourages everyone to take part in this county-wide event. In particular, the organization would like additional volunteers to target North End Road in Deltaville, Stampers Bay Road between Routes 33 and 3, Barrick’s Mill Road, Bob’s Hole Road, Wake Road, Dirt Bridge Road which are all used as cut-throughs between the north side of Route 33 and Route 3.
Supplies and support is available with the county and VDOT helping out.
Contact Trip Phillips to learn more at baxter.phillipsiii@gmail.com.
