Cleaning-Up Our Mesa!

By NICK YAMASHITA

The Progress

The local “Save our Mesa” group held a Mesa Cleanup day on Saturday, March 6. This activist group, which is pushing to stop an industrial-grade solar power generating facility from being built on the top of the nearby Mormon Mesa, has also worked to build a coalition behind keeping the area clean and preserved for future community use.

The cleanup event started with area residents beginning to arive at around 8 am. Approximately 15 people showed up and helped clean up trash from the top of the mesa for about 3-4 hours. A large trash bin was set up near the foot of the mesa, provided by County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick.

The event organizer and the ‘Save Our Mesa’ co-founder Lisa Childs was unable to attend at the last minute due to a family emergency. But there were others who stepped in to lead in the event.

One of those on-the-spot coordinators was Lyn Collins who reported that the event was able to clear a great deal of trash and rubbish out of the area.

“We had several mattresses, ice boxes, a freezer unit, lots of thick glass, furniture, hundred of nails, and more that was removed,” stated Collins. “It is unbelievable what people have dumped up here.”

The crowd of volunteers quickly expanded as a few local residents who were walking and exercising on the mesa also stopped to help clean up.

One of these was Torrey Jones. Jones collected multiple couch cushions and other trash items. She gathered piles along the way up and down the mesa and afterward picked them up with her vehicle. She eventually dropped all of the trash she gathered at the trash bin below.

“This is awesome!” Jones said. “I didn’t know this was going on today. This is something we who live here need to do on a regular basis.”

A couple of retirees to the valley, Ken and Kathy May, also came to help in the project. They said that they have felt the beauty and sacredness of the mesa.
“We are retired teachers from California and this is something we didn’t have there,” said Kathy May. “This is a beautiful area and we need to keep it beautiful.”

“It is astonishing how disgusting people can be,” said Ken May about the amount of trash being found dumped in the area.

The most difficult trash heaps were multiple piles of large, thick glass that were found.
“Glass is one of the hardest trash to clean up and get picked up,” said Nikki Bowers, one of the volunteers. “We did our best and we hope others can help in the future by picking up more of it.”

A magnet roller was provided by the Bennet family. It helped pick up multiple metal items, especially hundreds of nails, mainly from palettes that were dumped or burned in the area.

The volunteers took a short lunch break with sack lunches for everyone, provided by Kasen Kolhoss. A local realtor, Kolhoss said that he saw this as a chance to help the cause even though he couldn’t be there that day.

Collins reminded everyone that it is illegal to dump trash except at the dump, especially on public lands. “This is our backyard and we need to take care of it,” she said.

Besides the clean-up, ‘Save our Mesa’ received some good news last week. The Battle Born Solar Project has been put on “low priority” status by the Bureau of Land Management.

“This means our fight to preserve the mesa has been noticed,” Child said. “However, it does not mean it is the end of the fight. We have to keep the fight going.”

The Save Our Mesa is doing fun and interactive event on Saturday, March 13. They will be hosting an OHV Parade starting at the Logandale Ballfields parking lot and following back roads up to the top of the Mesa.

The staging and decorating will start in the east of the parking lot at the ballfields after 9:00 am. Then the parade will start at 11:00 am.

“We want everyone to come and decorate their OHV’s and be proud of our valley, our mesa and how amazing the community is,” said Childs.