Boykins residents clean up
Published 5:53 pm Tuesday, April 9, 2019
- From left to right, Amy Knight, LInda Beatty and Gayle Johnson of the White Team collected 16 bags of trash from Route 35 and Main Street in Boykins on Saturday. This was part of the observance by the GFWC Tarrara Woman's Club of Clean Rivers Month. Conservation is one of the group's projects. Other area residents also volunteered to help. — Submitted Laurel Livingston
Audra Anderson secures a trash bag to Gavin Anderson’s belt. Behind from left to right are Robefrt Mitchell, Heath Neilsen and Hope Anderson. They were on the Red team at No. 8 Schoolhouse Road on Saturday morning and afternoon. — Stephen H. Cowles Tidewater News
BOYKINS
Forty-one people, adults and children alike, came together on an overcast Saturday morning to clean three littered roadsides in Boykins. Together, they collected 186 bags filled with the trash collected during the 3-1/2 hours devoted to the effort.
The task was coordinated by the GFWC Tarrara Woman’s Club, which focuses on conservation as one of its major projects. Laurel Livingston, club president, said the cleanup was also done in connection with Clean Rivers Month.
She provided the following figures:
• The Red Team at No. 8 Schoolhouse Road had nine adults and four children working for 3.5 hours (45.5 hours women/men/children hours). They collected 80 bags of trash. One separate load with miscellaneous stuff was hauled to the Boykins dump. Multiple tires and a television remain to be picked up by the county.
• The White Team at Route 35/Main Street had five adults working for 3.5 hours (17.5 women/man hours). They collected 16 bags of trash.
Aaron Morgan and his son, Julian, worked on the Blue team over on Powell’s Hill Road. — Stephen H. Cowles Tidewater News
• The Blue Team at Powell’s Hill Road had 17 adults and six children working for 3.5 hours (80.5 women/men/children hours). They collected 90 bags of trash, and two separate loads with miscellaneous stuff were hauled to the Boykins dump.
Livingston added that the club is grateful to the following groups for volunteering: Boykins Lions Club; Boykins Fire and Rescue; Boykins Baptist Church; Boykins United Methodist Church; and the Southampton County Sheriff’s Department.
That work, though, might have seemed somewhat futile in light of a discovery not long afterward. She stated via email on Monday, “Not less than 24 hours from collecting trash and there are already some new deposits! I struggle to understand the mind-set of people who choose to litter. I wish I knew the ultimate solution to stopping it — stricter laws, harsher sentences, cameras?”
Residents concerned about the town’s appearance are encouraged to simply get trash bags and start collecting. Livingston noted that one piece of any kind of trash every day adds up.
“They build and build until we have the mess our teams tackled on Saturday, and that was covering only three roads in the county, all of which could have been deposited in one of the multiple free dumps we have within the county. I would love to have more residents recognize the severity of the issue, stop considering it someone else’s problem and step up to make a difference instead of watching the situation get worse.”
