Thousands of pounds of trash collected from Kamloops grassland cleanup

KAMLOOPS — This past weekend nearly 40 volunteers gathered  to clean up the Dewdrop Flats area.

It’s an annual cleanup organized through the Kamloops Naturalist Club. The club’s president Nancy Flood says the volunteers at this year’s cleanup collected just under 5,000 pounds of garbage.

Some of the garbage volunteers picked up included thousands of nails and screws, cups, car parts and even large items.

“A couch and a kitchen cabinets were dumped in a single location,” Flood says.

The fourth annual cleanup was a smaller event compared to last year’s event. The 2018 event included other groups helping with the cleanup but this year the club did it on their own with some help form the Grasslands Conservation Council.

“About 38 volunteers came out and worked very hard for approximately three hours,” Flood says.

City staff says they saw the scales hit 4,994 pounds of trash. Last year, the group had 140 volunteers and collected just over 6,000 pounds of garbage.

Flood says despite a successful cleanup, there is still a message people aren’t getting about polluting in natural areas.

“Overall, it appears that abuse of natural areas in this case the Dewdrop and Rosseau Creek Wildlife Management Area continues unabated.”

Flood says the group is also warning the public of dry conditions in the grassland area.

“Given the increasingly dry conditions is the existence of burn pits which provide evidence of large open fires and the thousands of cigarette butts thrown out along the road into dry grassland,” she says.

Flood encourages the public to report anyone suspected of violating environmental protection laws to call the Report All Poaches and Polluters line at 1-877-7277 or do so online by clicking here.

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