We had a great turnout today. Once again we made our mark and left no doubt that the Rhody Rovers where in attendance today. I will get a total number of members present from Pete, hopefully before Tuesdays meeting.
The amount of work accomplished in a few hours is almost staggering. Standout performances for the club included, but I’m sure are not limited to;
A non-stop hustle from one of the unsung members, Rich Mumford and his two girls. As usual, no questions, just straight to the job at hand. You can always count on Rich.
I asked Bill Newcome if he had a saw for some light trimming and he shot home and grabbed one and as it turned out we needed it quit a bit as we decided to blaze a path for better access once the 4x4s came around. Of course, he is the perfect guy for the job since he is a tree guy by trade. Good work Bill.
Lots of hustle from Chuck Wayss and his young sidekick. We have come to expect good things from Chuck in a very short time.
Mike Costa tackled the job of rounding up all the tires on site (pun intended) and found it was a monumental task indeed but with the help of ??? (sorry guy, IDK your name. See pictures) These guys must have handled 100 tires today, many needing to be dug out.
New member Dave Couto ran the sites heavy equipment; a small tractor/loader/backhoe that he, get this, borrowed, from a friend. Way to go Dave! He opened up the pathway into the dump site and made maybe 150 trips back and forth to the dumpsters.
Andy and Nick Venditelli/Venditelli Landscaping. These guys work two separate sites and removed and loaded into dumpsters, literally tons of trash including small buildings and even a 20 foot fiberglass boat. The man hours that these guys donated is in the hundreds.
The show of force that these three pieces of equipment and the labor we provided made a huge impact on the success of this years Earth Day cleanup in Big River and I’m certain that we are recognized as having made that contribution.
When this all came to light a few months ago and I asked for some help, another new member stepped forward to take on some of the less enjoyable tasks including sitting through a meeting with strangers, getting the word out to the appropriate people about our involvement, and keeping this club informed and pressured about this event. Darren Cooper is barely in his infancy as a RR member, yet he stepped up to take on some responsibility. Good job Darren.
I will try and post some before and after pictures. Its pretty amazing IMO.
Note that this was a dump site for years and years. Much of the trash was not simply on the surface, it was buried beneath more trash.
The jet skis came from off site and many of the tires were from the Old Town Hall Rd site where Andy Venditelli kicked ass with his skidsteer loader with a grapple bucket. Our clubs contributions were far and away the most notable by virtue of our good turnout and donated equipment. The 4×4 clubs made a big impact too with their trucks and the Mt Bikers had the management chores…………….can’t really say if there were any tree huggers, hikers, horse people, Appalachian Mountain Clubbers, greenies, or environmental Dogooders. We were pretty heavily protected though, (or was that monitored?) by armed Environmental Police, probably do to the large presence of potentially hostile wheeled vehicle operators on site, but they were on overtime pay so I didn’t really count them. Besides, not one time were they observed picking up any trash.
This series shows “after” shots. Unbelievable, IMO. The last four show the back side of a slope that was the center of this mini landfill. The same area seen earlier with a guy in a white shirt pulling out a steel frame, the girl in the red pants dumping trash into a large bucket, and the guy in orange gloves holding a bleach bottle.
Once again, great job by all involved. We not only made a difference, but we drew positive attention to the club and our sport. More on the clean up can be found on the RI NEMBA site.
Rich