https://www.times-gazette.com/news/20190423/volunteer-cleanup-group-tackles-dump-sites-at-siler-trails
An independent group of Ashland residents decided to take cleanup matters into their own hands after witnessing the amount of trash and dumping at Siler Trails.
“I walk the trails down there along Jamison Creek with my neighbor ... and we were coming up through and we just looked down and it was just so disgusting,” said Barbara Morejon, a member of the Siler Trails group.
Located at the end of East Bank Street next to the Old Siler House, Siler Trails is a city-owned recreation area that follows Jamison Creek and opens up on Hillcrest Drive. While the trails themselves have remained clear of trash and debris, bottles, tires, scrap metal and even an older record player can be found littered among the woods.
The Siler Trails volunteer group — composed of Morejon and Ashland residents Barry Wheeler, Heidi and Gary Weller, Beatrice North, Eric Boyer, Jason and Tanya Nell and Aaron Ross — formed with the assistance of Local Roots volunteer Karisa Wild.
“I had made a Facebook page called Friends For the Future as an online resource for somewhere people can find events pertaining to local cleanup efforts,” Wild said. “It’s just a place for people to get more information.”
In late March, the nine-person Siler Trails’ group contacted Ashland City Parks & Recreations Department Director Jason Counts to verify if their volunteer group had permission to conduct a cleanup. The city was able to provide trash bags and also offered to pick up any trash collected.
“I appreciate the fact that the community is willing to help; it helps them to take pride in the parks,” Counts said. “It also helps create pride in the city.”
Morejon and eight volunteers spent roughly four hours at Siler Trails and collected nearly 30 bags of trash and debris from one section of the trails, though Morejon said they only just scratched the surface.
“We pulled out old trash bags that had trash in them that fell apart as you’re pulling it out,” she said. “Underneath the trash bags, there were more trash bags.”
Standing water from rain in early April inhibited the group from continuing their cleanup, but Morejon said the plan is to return to Siler Trails as soon as the water recedes and she hoped to get some extra assistance from the Parks & Rec department.
“The more bags we pulled out the deeper the hole got,” Morejon said. “I’d like to see if the Parks & Recreation can get a backhoe in there and kind of dig some of that out, and then we can go back and clean what’s left.”
And while the Siler Trails group’s efforts uncovered evidence of frequent dumping, Counts said he did not believe dumping was a prominent problem throughout the city’s parks and trails.
“We recently even toured the Sandusky Hollow trails and it wasn’t that bad, but do we find that stuff? Yes,” Counts said. “It’s something that we clean up right away; I can’t say that there’s one particular park that is always trashed.”
Wild believed the contrary and has worked with several independent groups of volunteers to canvas other parks and recreation areas to focus on cleanup.
“I think this is an issue that we have not had a lot of enforcement on in regard to making people aware of the kind of problems that it creates,” Wild said. “It’s an education issue and it’s an awareness issue, and I think in the past in Ashland we haven’t had a large movement of people who consider this to be an important issue.”
“It was so nice once all the trash is gone, (the area) is just plastered with buttercups; it was just beautiful,” Morejon said.
— Jessica Speweike can be reached at 419-281-0581, ext. 237, and jspeweike@times-gazette.com.
